The Guardian Year One
by shenandoahok
Summary: James Olsen fights crime in National City as the Guardian when he's imbued with superpowers.
1. Chapter 1

The Guardian Year One

Chapter One

It was a dark night, a night darker than any other night, but it was still early; it was only seven o'clock in the evening, and National City was noisy as usual. Supergirl had extinguished the blazing fire at the Nova High Rise, and saved nearly three hundred people from burning to death. James already had his editor working on the story, and making a huge puff piece starring Supergirl. James looked out over the city from CATCO, and everything seemed quiet for the moment. It was a Tuesday, and the majority of his staff had headed out for the evening. Kara had returned to the office after her battle because James needed her to work on a hot story, and Snapper continued his work in the editing room. James expecting him to have all the updated stories on the website by four in the morning.

James Olsen meticulously looked over photos of the impenetrable Supergirl fighting against the Parasite, Rudy Jones. The Parasite was a nasty creature, a man infected with an ancient alien bug. He then set one of the pictures of her blowing out the fire at the Nova High Rise next to it. He was amazed how the uncontrollable beast tore into the young, tenacious heroin, but she stood her ground. It put her on the brink of death twice, but she recovered; it was her tenacity that he admired more than anything: the fact that she never gave into her pain. He thought back to the first time they kissed for a moment, and then smiled. He didn't know why he kept going back to happier times when Cat Grant ran things at CATCO. It seemed that everything was going perfect for Kara and James, but then she called off the relationship. Her reasoning was almost unfathomable to him. It caught him off guard in such a way that he wanted to scream at the top of his lunges. He didn't know why he felt the way he did, but he did.

"I need to find myself," she said. Those words played repeatedly in his mind, and he sat back in his chair for a second to rest his head. "I need to find myself." James laughed for a moment. It was a cold laugh, the kind of laugh that he did so he wouldn't go insane from thinking about her. When she initiated the first kiss, he thought she'd be mature enough to move forward with the relationship. It was like she wasn't mature enough to make adult decisions, but he felt a void in his heart about it nonetheless; he truly loved her, and wanted to be part of her life. He smiled for a moment, and held up her picture to the light. Her face sparkled in the picture. He slid another photo out of his yellow folder; it was the Guardian. He placed it next to Supergirl's photo like they were a couple. He shook his head in disagreement, and then placed the Guardian photo back into the yellow folder.

National City loved the Guardian, and he didn't exactly understand the appeal of the newest vigilante on the streets of National City. He had his thoughts about why National City loved him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. All they knew was the man on the surface, but they didn't have a clue about the man underneath the armor. Kara walked in front of his office, and didn't even look in to see him. He kept his eyes on her as she walked past. The weight on his heart was heavier than he thought it should be; it was like a two ton truck.

"It's almost nine o'clock in the evening," Kara screamed from the hallway, "I'm out. Okay, James?"

"Okay," James yelled from his office. "See you tomorrow."

He wondered if Kara felt anything or was her heart as hard as her Kryptonian skin. Did she have a clue what she had done to him? He couldn't help but wonder. She must feel something he thought. He looked down at her photo, traced over her face with his right index finger, and then whispered, "Move on, James. Just move on. She has."

The Internet had blown up over the Guardian's inception during the attack of the Parasite, and James thought it had to do with his human qualities. Mankind had a hard time relating to the pain of an alien who couldn't feel pain, but since James was a human, he knew National City could relate to that. Man bleeds. Kryptonians don't bleed. In addition, National City had a fear of aliens, especially from the red kryptonite infected Supergirl, and how she attacked National City, threw Cat Grant out of a high rise window, and nearly destroyed a downtown pub. The people of National City had long memories when it came to bad events. The majority of them might have forgiven Supergirl for attacking the city, but they won't trust her without question, and no matter what they say, she will always be seen as an alien. But even in the alien community, Supergirl wasn't a welcomed sight. They didn't trust her because she worked with the government. Suddenly, he realized that Kara's life was complicated because she had an entire world of problems to balance. Humans would never fully accept her as a human being and aliens would always see her as a sellout.

For a moment, James allowed his mind to wander, and he thought about Kara standing in front of him in just a white t-shirt and panties. Her radiant smile pierced his soul. He looked up at her, and admired the sun shining in the background. His thoughts about her were intense, and passionately feverish. He knew the image of her couldn't be real, but he wanted it to be; he always wanted it to be. He had tried several times to block out the moment they shared, but he couldn't. He wanted her badly, but the relationship wasn't part of her plan. She was smitten with another guy, with Mon-El. He saw the way she looked at him, and it burned. It was like she took a torch to his heart. The life of a superhero didn't allow for backseat romances, but Mon-El was in her inner circle now. James felt like an outsider to her, a nuisance. He smiled; it was a brittle smile—cold. He placed the stack of photos in an envelope, and then placed them in his desk on top of several other photos. Palming his bald head, he rubbed it, as if something troubled him about the photos he had just placed in his desk. He pulled the envelope back out of his desk drawer, opened it quickly, and thumbed through the photos. He pulled out the photo with Supergirl striking the Parasite. In the background, he saw a limousine with a pasty redhead woman watching the girl of steel. He didn't notice the woman in the background when he snapped the picture in his Guardian suit. It was like she didn't resonate until he thought about how much he truly desired Kara.

The woman looked like she had supreme authority, but sickly pale. She looked dangerous-ominous. He took out a magnifying glass, and saw the woman's face clearer, and it was Lillian Luthor. He knew she was a force of nature that had more than a few weapons that could hurt Kara. He took that photo, and pulled out another folder in his desk with Lillian's name written across the top of it. He placed the photo in there.

An older, scraggly, and balding white man lumbered by James' office, and he said, in a strong, manly voice, "Snapper! Let's talk." James sensed his recalcitrant ways, but he didn't let it bother him.

"Yes, boss?" Snapper asked snarkily.

"Where are we on the Cadmus piece?" He asked seriously. He didn't care too much for Snapper's attitude, but the knew the older, balding man had skills that couldn't be easily replaced.

"Wait? You really want to screw with those people?" Snapper asked, "Do you have any idea who these people are?"

"Yeah. With enough negative publicity..."

"It's your grave, Olsen. These are the kind of people that'll bury you face down."

"Just get it to me by COB tomorrow, Snapper."

Snapper clicked his heels together, gave James a palm-showing salute, and said, "Yes, sir!"

Later that night...

James Olsen had a large apartment, an apartment a few blocks from Kara's place, but he made a conscious choice not to bother her. He had a life size photo of Supergirl on his wall, and when he walked past it, he mumbled, "That's not creepy. That's not creepy at all." He had a lush bedroom, a bedroom ripe for two souls intertwined in a deep, steamy romance, but he occupied it by himself. On the balcony, he had a telescope that he used to peer up at the heavens. Sometimes he would see Kara swooping through the sky, and capture a photograph of her for the newspaper. He took as many photos of her as Supergirl as possible. He grabbed a bottle of wine, and poured a glass over some dry ice. He took a sip, and swirled it around his mouth before swallowing.

Walking out on the balcony, he peered over at Kara's apartment across the way, and it looked lifeless. He knew she was working for the DEO, and he wasn't invited. It was something that she did in her spare time. He wondered if she was inside whittling a mountain of chocolate ice cream down to size, but that was only his mind trying to humanize, trying to deflect from the pain he felt from losing her. He smiled sheepishly for a moment, and then thought, if not for the lead film around his apartment, Kara would easily find out his alternate identity.

He heard the doorbell ring, and he knew it was Winn at the front door. "It's open," he yelled in a loud voice, "Just twist the knob." He guzzled down the rest of his wine, and then wiped his mouth.

James towered over Winn; he was approximately six-foot-four inches while Winn only stood about five-foot-eight inches. Winn wore tight, skinny jeans where the pants legs narrowed into the ankles. He had a fluffy, somewhat curly hairdo, and the sides were thinly cut. He handed James a silver tube about six inches long.

"Careful. This is the Phantom Grenade Launcher," he said with a stern look on his face.

"What does it do?" He asked.

"Basically, it deionizes the atmosphere for a circumference of ten meters."

"How long does it last?" James asked.

"A few seconds," he said. He held the launcher in his right hand, and explained, "Gives you enough time to make your kill attack." Handing the weapon to James, James clapped it on his right arm, and rolled his sleeve over it.

"This should give me the upper hand."

6


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

James worked out in the local gym next to CATCO called Better Bodies; it was a huge complex with multiple floors. The first floor had the weights and low grade running machines like treadmills. The upper level had the more expensive equipment. James enjoyed a good run on the treadmill every now and again, but his main concern was strength and agility. He did a lot of stretching and weight lifting throughout the week, and today was no exception.

Since his father died on a mission with the National Intelligence Agency, he used Martial Arts and weight lifting as a means to cope with the tragedy. Before his father died, he had to take Martial Arts from different Masters all over the world. When his father was stationed in China, he learned Preying Mantis Kung Fu and Chinese Boxing. He always had wonderful flexibility when it came to his Martial Arts, but he had to work on his strength training because of the super villain, criminal class located in National City.

He was pressing about three hundred and fifteen pounds with no problem at all. When he picked the weights off the rack, he did so with a huge grunt. He started pressing the weights with no problem. After fifteen repetitions, he placed the weights back on the rack, and thought to himself that the Guardian suit had increased his strength. He wanted to ask Winn if the suit could change him on some physiological level, but he had forgotten. Even though he was now the National City hero, he still had a lot on his mind with his recent breakup with Kara.

He looked around the gym for a moment, and thought it had one of the largest weight areas in National City. It was a sea of different weight equipment that he needed to keep his body prepared to endure the roughness of National City's mean streets, especially the area called Little Africa.

The weight room area of the gym was a musty area, the kind of place where men with attitudes worked out, and James had a lot of attitude. Sweat poured off his head, and he left a wet spot on the bench, but he wiped it off with his white towel. James always pushed it hard in the gym because he knew the bad guys weren't going to take it easy on him in the streets. Approximately thirty something people pumped iron in the weight room area at six o'clock in the morning, and James thought it odd nobody was talking about Supergirl. He realized that he was probably the only person who had her on the mind all the time.

James continued to lift his heavy weights when he noticed a thin, approximately five-foot-eight Asian girl watching him. Her hair was completely straight as if she pressed it. She had a serious Asiatic look that he admired, and she seemed to admire him too. He glared over at her, and smiled. She smiled back. There wasn't that many women frequenting the weights early in the morning, but she didn't seem to be a stranger to weight lifting. Normally, the ladies didn't spend too much time away from the treadmills and stair-masters that set at the front of the room. There was a fleet of young women running on the treads, but he had his eyes on the Asian lady. She had a svelte frame, but it was tight and still feminine like he liked. She looked familiar to him for some reason, but he couldn't place it. He realized that he probably brushed past her in the local eatery, and just didn't notice her because Kara gave him tunnel vision.

He watched her walk over to a young, black girl no more than eighteen-years-old, and she whispered something to her on the treadmill. "That's odd," James whispered, "Both of those ladies look crazy familiar." James watched her closely because he wanted to make eye contact with her one more time just to be sure he wasn't going crazy. He wanted to ask her on a date or at least get her phone number. He didn't want to move too fast, but it was about time for him to move past Kara.

When James finished with his set, she stopped talking to her friend, and walked over to him, and said, "I'm Ju Gee." He felt a little surprised by her forwardness, but he liked it nonetheless. She came up to him with a carefree look on her face that he liked. He smiled.

James shook her hand, and said, "James Olsen." He noticed she had a perfect set of teeth and a nice smile almost immediately.

"Oh. I know who you are," she said sheepishly, "You're pretty popular around these parts."

"Are you a regular at the gym?" James asked. He wanted to move past Kara as soon as possible because she had indicated that she was done with the possibility of a relationship. Even though she didn't say it out loud, he pretty much got the feeling she didn't want a relationship with him.

"Here and there," she said, "Preparing a photo shoot with Pablo Whales."

"Oh. I was wondering. Would you like to have lun…?"

A sudden breeze—Kara in her nice work clothes—startled James as he tried to talk to Ju Gee. He didn't know what she was doing at the gym so early in the morning because she didn't lift weights. She had on a white blazer with black pants, and she looked professional.

"James," Kara said with a huge smile on her face, "Whatcha doing?" She had her incessant smile, a smile of innocents, and it made James automatically smile back.

"Oh. Well. Let me not interrupt," Ju Gee said, "Talk to you later, James."

"Okay," James said. Ju grabbed her friend, and they exited the weight room, and didn't make an attempt to look back. James wondered if the presence of another woman upset Kara. He didn't want to come across as somebody fast and loose with the women. James looked over at Kara, and said, "What brings you here?"

"Snapper. He has me working on the Cadmus piece with him," she said, "He was pretty adamant about that Cadmus piece. He wants a rough draft by noon."

James wondered if Kara used her super hearing to purposely interrupt his conversation with Ju Gee, but at the same time, that was what he wanted. That's exactly what he wanted Kara to do. He wanted Kara to feel jealous on some level, but at the same time, her Jealousy didn't mean she would let down her guard long enough to find love. "It's time to expose the corruption, Kara. We can't let Cadmus reign supreme."

At the office...

James fixation on Cadmus, by seeing the woman in his photos, drove him to the conclusion that spies were everywhere. He knew the woman in the photo was Lillian Luther, and he had her image on the big screen television in front of his desk. As CEO of CATCO, he wanted to do everything in his powers to bring down Cadmus. He studied her face as if she was a puzzle that could be easily solved. His motto—do what you have to do to win—rang in his mind repeatedly as he looked into Lillian's eyes. He noticed her menacing stare, and how she seemed almost unflinching. "What makes you tick?" He whispered to himself. She looked like a wolf: dangerous and vicious. "Is it complete control? Dominance? What's your weakness?"

James knew Lillian Luther through his association with Lex Luthor, and when Lex went to prison, Lillian swore that she'd do everything in her power to crush Superman, his friends, and his family. At the time, James thought she said those remarks out of anger, but now he realized that she had the power to bring them to fruition. James thought Lillian bathed in death, and without question, forced abject terror on her enemies. Lillian's threats—after the sentencing, "I'll destroy you, Superman!"-were slowly coming true. It pained him that she captured Supergirl, and with the advent of Kryptonite weapons, she might have the tools to kill her.

All the people on Lex' enemies list knew he dabbled in Kryptonite, and exploited opportunities to destroy the Man of Steel. He had a database full of projects on how to build weapons to hurt or kill Superman. Cadmus would have died out nearly fifteen years earlier, if not for the Luther's money. They kept project Cadmus alive. It was Cadmus who fed information to the DEO about Kryptonians' strengths and weaknesses. Kara had mentioned to him earlier that Cadmus can clone Kryptonians, and if that was the case, their arsenal would be almost unstoppable.

Snapper—mean-mugging and grunting—stormed through James' door, and handed him the rough draft of the article that James wanted. It was a well written article, but it didn't have enough sauce on Lillian Luther. In fact, it was almost dismissive of Lillian's contribution to the corrupt agency, and that bothered him. James opened up his desk drawer, and pulled out a stack of folders. He thumbed through the folders, and pulled out the one with Lillian's name on it. "Give this to Kara. Tell her twenty-five hundred words."

"Twenty-five hundred words? She's not ready for that," Snapper snapped.

"She can do it," James said, "I believe in her. Lex sent a shipment of Kryptonite to National City University. I'd like to know what happen with that?"

Snapper gave James a long, cold stare, and then waddled out of the room. James turned off the overhead monitor of Lillian Luther, and then fell back in his chair. He looked as if he was in a coma, but it was how he did his deep thinking. He spent a lot of time focusing on Lillian Luther like she was the head of Cadmus, but that wasn't the real truth. She was the money, but there was another woman in charge of the institution. He met the head of Cadmus during a dinner date with Lana and her father, General Lane, several years back at his mansion on the outskirts of Metropolis. It was a formal gathering with over twenty high ranking guests, and General Lane hired James to take pictures.

"No pictures of Amanda Waller," General Lane said to James Olsen.

"Why not?" James asked.

"Some government officials you don't," he said, "Just leave it at that."

When Amanda Waller walked through the front door, she had several body guards around her—always . Even though she was diminutive compared to the surrounding men, she was large in presences. She had a small, perfectly comb fro with little makeup on her face. She had a sleek frame, and strong, muscular looking arms. She had the rank of a General, but Lana had told James earlier in the day. "Nobody knows her rank. She has several PhDs and heads Cadmus, and has her hands in the dirtiest parts of the intelligence branch."

"Seriously?" James asked with a look of disbelief, "My father worked for the NIA."

"There're rumors she killed her own family when she became the director of the NIA nearly twenty years ago."

James walked over to the window in his office, and knew that Amanda's name wouldn't be in the article, and he wasn't sure if he should play with that kind of fire. He only knew the myth of Amanda Waller, but all the awful things he heard must have some foot in reality. When he mentioned her to Clark a few years ealier, he immediately told James to drop the conversation.

"Never mention her name," Clark said.

"People act like she's the devil," James said.

Clark laughed. "No. She's the devil's mom."

James never forgot that conversation because if a human woman could put that much fear in the strongest man on the planet, then there was something to her. Once he remembered how the conversation about Amanda Waller went in his mind, he realized that he didn't want to cross that line. The last thing he needed to do was to put an unnecessary burden on Supergirl.

Later That Evening…

James wore some relaxed fitting blue jeans with a buttoned up, short sleeve shirt. When he looked at himself in his full length mirror, he played around with his shirt buttoned up to the neck or not fastening the top three buttons. He decided to hang loose, and leave the top three buttons unbuttoned so the upper part of his muscular chest would show. Leaving the top buttons fastened made him seem unapproachable, and he wanted to feel relaxed in the Alien Bar.

When James arrived at the bar, Winn had already secured a table in the far corner of the room. Maggie and Alex sat in a booth so they could talk about their relationship, and Kara was at the bar playfully flirting with Mon-El. James veered over at Kara for a second, and immediately flushed any feelings he had deep down inside. He looked over at her once, and immediately headed for Winn's table. He hated the fact that ignoring Kara and Mon-El was palpable. He felt like not paying attention to them was louder than going up to Kara, and screaming, "How the hell are you? I see you're going to fuck this guy at some point." He started laughing at the thought.

"What's so funny?" Winn asked.

"Oh nothing," James said, "Just waiting to get a few drinks in me."

"James, you ever thought about talking to one of these alien chicks?" Winn asked.

James smiled for a second. "I was, but then..."

Winn almost spit out his drink. "True. True."

"I met a young lady this morning," James said, "But it's like I knew her or something."

"Did you know her?" Winn asked.

"That's the crazy thing," James said, "I feel like I do, but I don't. It's the craziest."

"James?" Maggie said, "How's it hanging?"

"'Bout ei..."

"Don't say it," Alex said as she tried to choke down her drink. "You're horrible, James."

Maggie laughed. "At least you're in a good mood."

"I'm doing okay. Thanks, Maggie."

James looked around the room for the barmaid, but had a hard time seeing her through all the haze. Several of the patrons were smoking on electric cigars, and the smells were pleasant to the nose. One of the guys behind him smoked a lemon flavored cigar, and the aroma calmed him to a certain degree. He took in a huge whiff of smoke, and turned towards the small dance floor for a moment. Three lesbian couples were on the dance floor in a deep embrace. They all looked like they were recovering from a bad argument.

Most days of the week only one barmaid walked the floor until the weekend. The bar had low hanging, upside down dome shaped lights, and James noticed the barmaid was standing next to Kara. He didn't want to approach the bar because he felt uncomfortable for some reason. Talking to Kara about everything except the way she made his heart bleed was more pain than it was worth. If a relationship was a living organism, then it would only be natural for that organism to find some way to survive an animal attack, but every time he wanted to talk to her about what happened to their relationship, she refused to discuss it.

He looked over at Winn, and he was busy drinking his drink, and James felt awkward sitting for over five minutes without a drink in his hand.

"Here goes nothing," He said as he headed for the bar. Standing behind Kara, he said, "How's it going, Kara?"

She turned around immediately, smiling from ear to ear, and said, "Hey, you." The greeting caused James to pause for a second because it felt cold and unfeeling. It was completely void of any emotion.

"Just getting me a couple of beers and an Apple Martini," he said sheepishly.

"'Sup with your shirt?" Kara ask. She looked at him seriously for a second. "Kind of letting it hang out." She pushed her glasses up on face.

"It's just warm in here," he said, "You know how it gets?"

"Yeah," she said. She turned around, and looked as if he knocked the wind out of her for a second.

He grabbed his drinks, and said, "Talk to you later."

She kind of waved at him, but it was a half wave. He could see her tapping her fingers on the bar as if something was bothering her, but he didn't want to pry. It was confusing because her demeanor changed during the conversation, but he didn't understand why. When he sat down at the table, he asked Winn a few things about what she was drinking.

"Is Kara drinking that alien drink?"

"Yeah. She had a few," he said. "Mon-El cut her off." He make the crazy gesture with his right finger.

"Okay," he said, "That explains a lot." He looked back at Kara for a moment, and she looked over at him, and gave him a nasty looking scowl before she turned away. James was completely caught off guard by the look, but he just summed it up as too much alien ale.

The bar—for a Tuesday night—was blissfully active, and several alien ladies stumbled through the front door, and they actually looked human. One of the aliens who walked into the room looked human except for her spotted forehead. She had brown spots on her tan skin. He noticed one last lady walk through the door, and it was Ju Gee, the Asian lady he met at the gym.

James immediately hopped out of his seat, and said, "Ju, I didn't know you came here."

"Yeah," she said, "Love hanging out with my kind of people."

"Wait? You're an alien?" he asked.

"Just weird," she said. "Sometimes I like to escape my room."

"Why's that?" James asked.

"My roomie is eighteen with three PhDs," she said, "She's one of the smartest people on the planet."

James paused for a minute, and then said, "Is your roommate Rachel Ballard?" He had an enthusiastic look on his face.

"Yes," she said.

"Wow! Just wow," he said, "Do you know she published a book called 'It's not that God doesn't Care, But God Isn't There.' She was nine." James waved for the barmaid, and she came over to his table immediately. She was a new barmaid that had come into the pub while he was sitting with Ju. "What would you like, Ju?"

"Long Island," she said. "Extra lemon."

"Okay," the barmaid said, "Can I get you another beer, sir?"

"Two beers and an Apple Martini," James said, "Thank you."

"You're welcomed."

"So, I read Rachel's work," James said, "I was at her National City University graduation when she received her four bachelor degrees a year later."

Ju smiled. "She's the greatest. She's like my sister," she said, "We've been roomies for nine years now. What's your favorite quote from Rachel's first book?"

James thought for a second, and said, "I'm not angry with god because five cops killed my dad. If I had an ounce of anger for a god, then that would negate my atheism because I'd believe there was a god to be angry at. I'm angry at the cops. I'm angry at the justice system that didn't prosecute them for killing my dad. I'm angry at the lack of justice. I'm angry because of the injustice." James looked down at his cold beer, took a drink, and said, "Her words resonated with me."

"Me too," Ju said, "She works nonstop on the betterment of humankind."

"What's your favorite quote from the book?" James asked.

Ju laughed sheepishly for a moment. "That's a hard one." She looked around the room for a second, and noticed the girl at the bar looking at her. "Who's that?"

James turned around for a moment, and noticed Kara looking at him. "Oh. That's Kara." He waved at her, but she didn't wave back.

"Jealous girlfriend?" Ju asked.

"No. No. Not at all," James assured her.

"Okay. Well, I don't have a famous quote from the book," she said, "But I liked it when she wrote in the prologue to her thesis on quantum physics, 'We have Superman with all his gifts and powers, and where there's one, then you can assume there's many. To us mere mortals, he's like a god. We either learn all we can now about his strength and weaknesses, or relegate ourselves to his underlings tomorrow. I'd rather do the former.'"

The waitress dropped off the drinks, and when Ju took a sip of her tea, he noticed a black ring on her right pinkie finger. It was black with a "c" in the middle of it. He remembered back when he met Amanda Waller that she had the same ring. "What does the c on that ring mean?"

Ju looked down at it for a second, and said, "Oh. Caring. It means caring."

The Next Morning…

James only slept for a few hours before he headed back to work, and when he entered into the Office, Snapper met him in the main entrance. He looked befuddle.

"What's wrong?" James asked.

"We're down. The whole damn system is down," he snapped, "I posted that Cadmus piece, and in five minutes we went off-line."

"Can you pull up the page internally?" James asked.

"Yeah," he said, "No outside access."

When James and Snapper headed for the elevator, they saw a fleet of men in black and one woman entering into the building. It was Amanda Waller, and she didn't look happy. She hopped on the elevator with James and Snapper, and immediately chewed into them.

"Who do you think you are, Olsen?" Amanda asked. She looked over at Snapper. "You know better than to fuck with Cadmus, Snapper."

"Just Lillian Luther," James said, "The piece was about her."

"I don't give a flying fuck. It was about Cadmus," she said, "And we're here for the protection of the world against Alien beings."

"Lillian has a personal vendetta against Supergirl," he said, "That's why I had the piece written."

"You do realize Supergirl's an alien?"

"But..."

"But nothing, Olsen. I spent years refining Kryptonite to keep Krptonians in their place," she snapped, "And I'd be damned if you or anybody else jeopardizes my work. Remove the article, and make sure nobody has a copy of it."

When James walked off the elevator with Snapper and Amanda Waller, James said, "Snapper, remove the article." Amanda and James walked into his office, and Kara came up behind them. When Kara got close to Amanda, she fainted.

"What did you do?" James asked.

"Just know that your little girlfriend and her cousin are no match for Cadmus." She opened up her blouse, and it was a kyptonite laced vest underneath it. "We don't fuck around." She walked over to James, and said, "Your father."

"Don't talk about my fath..."

"Your father worked for me in the NIA, Olsen,' she said, "Surely he warned you about meddling in these affairs before his untimely death?"

Later that morning:

James placed Kara on his cozy sofa, and gently laid her head on the soft pillow. She looked peaceful. Her face had a shine to it. He opened the office window to let the sun shine directly on her face. He knew the rays would rejuvenate her powers. He knelt beside her, and watched her breathing erratically for a moment. Parts of him wanted to call Hank Henshaw, the DEO leader, but he knew it wouldn't go well. He had messed up so much with that one article, and it put everybody at CATCO at risk that he didn't want to talk to Hank.

As Kara laid on his couch, he sat at his desk for a moment, and thought about where he went wrong. He knew messing with Amanda Waller was a dangerous game, a crazy game, and Snapper warned him. Even his father had clued him in all those years ago about messing with secretive government agencies because he knew from first hand experience. Jack Olsen, James father, was in the National Intelligence Agency or the NIA, and he died under suspicious circumstances on a covert mission to Iraq. And the last thing Jack would have wanted for James was to die under mysterious circumstances. And the last thing he wanted to do was to hurt Kara, and that upset him the most because he knew jabbing the lion was dangerous. She looked like she was at peace. It took her nearly two hours before she gained conscience, and when she did, she wasn't happy.

"What happen?" She asked. She sat up for a moment, and held her head. Her hair was in disarray as she tried to regain her composure. She had on a fluffy white top with light blue pants.

"Kryptonite," James said in a calm voice. He bounced a ball off the wall. "Weapons grade."

"Holy snickers," Kara said, "I feel like I died."

"It's my fault. Shouldn't have had you write that story."

"My story? How'd you like it?" Kara asked. "Oh. My head hurts so badly."

"It was a fantastic piece, but ..."

"Wait? This is about my story?" Kara asked.

"Yeah. It got the attention of some special people," he said, "The kind of people who make the world go around."

She walked onto the veranda, and looked up at the sun for a moment. She let the rays hit her in the face. "That girl last night was the one at the gym?" She asked.

"Yeah," he said, "She's a nice lady."

She looked down at the ground for a moment. "Okay. Well, she seems nice." She gave him a fake smile, and then exited the office.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

In 2007, an eight-year-old Rachel Ballard saw her father gunned down by cops outside his quaint National City apartment. It was a tumultuous year of cops killing black men in National City, and Richard Ballard was the sixth black man killed by an overzealous police force. It was an excitable year because Superman had caused a lasting peace around the entire globe, but many nations berated the United States for its lack of concern of unarmed black men being killed in just about every state.

He sat on the steps next to his two bedroom apartment looking out into the nicely cut grass. Admiring his work, he poured himself a glass of lemonade that Rachel had made earlier in the day. He took a long drink, wiped his mouth, and then asked, "Rachel, you want some of this lemonade?"

Rachel worked in the yard with some clear goggles over her eyes. She looked up at her father taking a break on the steps, and smiled. "No, Daddy. I'm going to finish edging around the side of the apartment." She was only eight years old, but she knew how to work on the grounds. Highly intelligent, the schools had already pushed her up several grades. She was a sophomore in high school, and probably one of the smartest kids in the nation. She was expected to enter college by the age of ten.

It was no different from any other warm, summer day in National City for Richard. He grabbed the hedge clippers, and walked over to the bushes next to his apartment. He put in his earplugs, and began to trim the hedges. Several cops passed by him as he worked on the hedges, and he looked back at them as they swooshed past him. Rachel was weed eating the crosswalk area up to her apartment, and had a sucker in her mouth. She kept stopping the weed eater, and adjusting her goggles.

In the summer, she spent her time working with her father and going to the library to study. Richard enjoyed one thing after his regular job: taking care of the lawn. It put extra money in his pockets to buy his daughter the best tutors in the area. The tutors didn't come cheap because most of them were PhDs, but they took pride into molding a child genius like Rachel. They knew that Rachel was a special child with abilities beyond that of the average human being.

In addition, the apartment complex reduced his rent by three hundred dollars a month for his extra work on the grounds. He thought of it as a "win win" situation because he looked at it as a way to exercise and spend extra time with his daughter. It was the way they bonded because Rachel loved to help her father with the weed eating, and she was a natural. Her father had taught her well when it came to good weed eating techniques.

When Richard was trimming the bushes in front of his apartment, several cops flew past him. He saw them run past his daughter, and then they took a left. He looked down at his shoes, and saw the strings had come loose. He bent down to tie them for only a minute. Rachel walked up with the weed eater by her side when a young teenager ran past her.

"Slow down, son!" Richard said. He didn't even scream or raise his voice. He could barely hear himself talk with the earplugs in his ears. He talked calmly when telling the kid to slow down while he was tying his shoes. He just wanted the young man to slow down because of the narrow cross walk, and he didn't want him to accidentally run into an innocent bystander, especially his daughter. It was a safety thing with Richard.

Suddenly he heard a cop yell, "Freeze, boy!" He didn't know what to make of the command because it was just a mumble to him. It startled him because he saw the sun's ray bounce off the barrel of the cops' guns, and he immediately stood to his feet. "I said freeze, nigger!" Before he could react, he felt a sting in his midsection. He grabbed his stomach with both hands, and felt the blood oozing out of it.

"Daddy!" Rachel ran up to her father, and he wrapped her in his arms, covering her with his blood. The left earplug fell out of his ear, and then he heard the cops screaming, "Freeze, boy." Turning away from the cops, he tried his best to protect his daughter from the barrage of bullets coming his way. He felt several more sharp pains in his back. "Get down on the ground!" He fell backwards onto the ground.

He looked up at his daughter, and said, "I love you, baby, but Daddy's going home, child." He reached up to the sky, and several more bullet rounds tore into his flesh. Rachel fell by his side.

"Daddy! Wake up, Daddy! Please," she screamed at the top of her lungs. She took his bloody right arm, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She fell down, and he fell on top of her.

"Somebody shut that fucking kid up," the large cop screamed, "Nothing worse than a monkey yelling."

When the cops pulled Rachel away from Richard's bloody body, she heard an officer named James David say, "One less coon we have to worry 'bout." The other officers laughed, and agreed with Officer David. "I'm all about a rodent free America. What y'all think?"

"We killed a man," Officer Casey said. He was much younger than the other officers. He looked like a baby compared to Officer David. "He was an innocent. Just working on the yard."

Officer David laughed. "Only innocent nigger is a dead nigger."

"Amen to that, brother," Officer Carter said, "Amen to that."

"Hey, Dave? He wasn't the nigger we wanted, but he was the nigger we got," Officer Monroe said laughingly.

David looked over at him, and laughed.

Rachel remembered all five of the officer's names. Officer David, Officer Monroe, Officer Lacey, Officer Carter, and Officer Casey; they were the killers of Rachel's father, and their faces were a permanent fixture in her mind. She couldn't take her eyes off their faces. Every one of the officers' faces were etched indelibly into her memory. Even if she wanted to forget them, she wouldn't be able to do so. They taunted her as she lay on the ground by her father's murdered corpse. It hurt her more than anything in the world to see her father lying on the ground with his eyes wide open, but not seeing anything. For Rachel, these cops were cold blooded murderers; for the rest of National City, they were the epitome of righteousness.

All she wanted to do was kill them all. It was a tragic day for Rachel, and after the cops left with her father's body, she sat on the stairwell in front of her apartment in a daze and wearing her father's blood. She mumbled under her breath the officer's names. "Officer David, Officer Monroe, Officer Lacey, Officer Carter, and Officer Casey will all pay." She hated them. Every part of her essence wanted them dead. Beneath her feet were an army of ants, and she watched them as they scurried about underneath the last step. "I will study harder than any human alive. I will become so powerful that Superman shall crumble underneath my feet." She stepped on the ants, and smashed them all into the ground. Tears ran down her face. "I will find beauty in their death."

Sketching the officers' names on her notebook was as casual as breathing for her. She wrote over the names repeatedly because she didn't want to ever forget their faces.

After the cops carelessly stole Richard's life, Rachel's intelligence sped up at an alarming rate. When she touched a book, she literally absorbed the information within the pages. She sat in the Public Library, and read through every book in the facility. She didn't spend her time with the other kids because she spent it in the library. She walked past a Time Magazine with Superman on the cover, and she rubbed out his face with her pencil eraser. She despised the Man of Steel, and everything he believed. He was nothing more than a glorified cop that went along with the status quo. With all his superpowers, he didn't change anything. He didn't change the way mankind treated each other.

While the other kids would play outside her apartment building, she would write complex equations concerning Warp Field Theory. Unfortunately, she noticed her mother slowly going insane over her father's death. "Those cops didn't have to kill him like that," her mother said as she sat quietly in the living room. "He was a good man." She sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of walnuts on the table. She'd crack them by holding two of them in her right hand, and squeezing hard. She would let the broken nuts fall on the table, and let the meat sit in front of her, and then she'd breakdown and cry. Rachel walked over to the table, and removed the meat from the crack nut. She then broke several of the walnuts with her hands, and put the meat in front of her mom, so she could eat them.

"Eat, Momma," Rachel said, "You'll feel better."

"Nothing can make feel better, child," she mumbled, "Those damn cops took everything from us."

"I know, Momma," Rachel said, "Maybe karma will deal with them."

The mother laughed for a moment. "Karma never deals with evil. It emboldens it. Don't you go about believing in that kind of foolishness, girl."

Her mother only lasted for six months after Richard's death. Every day, she stood by the swimming pool, and watched the spot where her husband took his last breath. He only died once, but in her mind, he died a thousand times. Eventually, She put a gun in her mouth, and pulled the trigger because she couldn't bear the pain of all the losses anymore. She had walked into the apartment, grabbed the gun from a box from underneath her bed, and walked into the kitchen with it. In the suicide note, she said that she couldn't bear life without her beloved husband. Rachel discovered the body after school, and it crushed her soul. After she read her mother's suicide note, she repeated the cops' names again and again, and then said, "They shall pay the ultimate price for what they've done. Maybe not today, but someday." She bent over her mother's dead body, and kissed her on the forehead. "They will pay, Momma, for I am KARMA."

She entered into the University of National City at the young age of ten. She met an older black woman named Amanda Waller who promised to pay for all her expenses. The government had already planned on paying for everything she needed at the University, but Amanda Waller made sure she had plenty of extra spending money.

Her roommate was an eighteen-year-old, talkative Asian girl named Ju Gee. Ju had her side of the room super neat with a picture of her father on the wall. He was wearing a cop uniform, and it immediately caused Rachel to pause. She didn't know if she wanted to be roomed with a cop's daughter, since the thought of cops repulsed her so much.

"What's your name, short stuff?" Ju asked when Rachel walked into their dorm room. It was a large dorm with all the amenities: refrigerator, microwave, stove, beds, computers, computer desks and so on. Ju was perched up on her bed wearing some black pajamas. She had a philosophy book in front of her. "You're like a baby." Rachel immediately noticed that the older, eighteen-year-old Asian teen was built like a model. She could tell that Ju spent plenty of time in the gym.

"I'm ten," Rachel said in a stern voice. She didn't like to be referred to as a baby or a child. "I'm Rachel Ballard."

"Sweet! The child prodigy?" Ju asked rhetorically. "I asked to be lodged with you."

"Why me?" Rachel asked.

"There's a million reasons, but I needed a thinking roommate, somebody with a mind that has moved past the chains of religion," she said, "I read your thesis called, 'The Day Religion Died'." She walked over to Rachel, and grabbed her bags. "If human beings don't learn to stand without the belief in the supernatural, then one day nature will decide we're no longer needed."

"I was nine when I wrote that," Rachel said. She thought back to her paper, and remembered her time in the foster home of Reverend Ronald Tyler, a fervent black preacher who claimed God called on him after a night of binge drinking and homosexual sex. She smiled at Ju, but it wasn't about anything she said. She just realized that Reverend Ronald Tyler was still fighting with his sexuality because she saw him dressed like a woman one night when she couldn't sleep.

"It changed my whole perspective on the world," Ju said, "It gave me freedom on an intellectual level."

It didn't take long for Rachel to make her new dorm room home even though Ju's father was a cop. She took a liking to Ju Gee because she was quiet most of the time, and loved learning. Even though Ju wasn't able to absorb knowledge like Rachel, it didn't matter. The roommates grew together like sisters, and always watched out for each other's well-being. One of Rachel's main treats was a fluffy pancake for breakfast with two strips of bacon. She had that almost every morning because it was what her Momma made for her every day. Sometimes she would fall into a dream state in the middle of the day just to focus on the memory she had of her parents.

Ju sometimes shared the plight of Asian people in the workforce, and she told Rachel that her father always had a hard time fitting in on the police department. She even claimed that he still walked the beat in Little Africa, a rough side of the city that was mostly black. Even though Ju claimed the National City PD had a lot of bad cops on the force, she always said that her father was above the fray, and that he treated all the people in Little Africa fairly.

"Has your father ever done anything shady on the job?" Rachel asked with a serious look on her face. "I've heard rumors about the National City PD."

"Of course not," Ju Gee said in a stern voice. "He's always been honorable."

"But if cops are committing crimes, then how does a good cop keep his nose clean?" Rachel asked. "Wouldn't he be a bad cop if he turned in his fellow cops?"

"Um. It would damage me greatly if my father ever committed a crime," she said, "He always taught me to do the honorable thing no matter what."

Smiling, Rachel immediately changed the subject because she didn't want to upset her roommate; besides, it wasn't her father who killed her father.

After one year at the University of National City, Rachel received four Bachelor degrees: one in Computer Science, one in Zoology, one in Particle Acceleration and one in Unified Field Theory. She was almost twelve-years-olds, and was already accepted into the graduate program for Unified Field Theory. Ju—for a graduation present—took Rachel to a restaurant in Little Africa called Mighty Pho Soup. When Rachel saw the Vietnamese eatery in the middle of black National City, she wondered why no black businesses existed in Little Africa. It was rather strange to her. She had never been on that side of town in her entire life. Her father always avoided Little Africa because of its high crime rate.

"I see my father," Ju said, "Daddy!"

An Asian cop looked up at her, and waved. He walked over to them, and shook Rachel's hand. "Is this your genius roommate.?"

"Rachel, this is my father," Ju said."

"Hello, sir."

Ju's father didn't stick around long because he had to make his rounds around the city. Meantime, Rachel and Ju went into the little Asian bistro, and the young waitress sat them in the far right corner of the restaurant. Rachel couldn't help but notice the waitress looked younger than her.

"How old is she?" Rachel asked.

Ju looked over at her, and then said, "Probably sixteen."

Rachel looked over at her, and she looked like skin and bones. "Hmm." She grabbed a bottle of red sauce on the table, and looked at the Asian writing on the bottle. She took a little saucer off the stack in front of her, and squirted some sauce on to it.

"Oh. You've done this before?" Ju asked.

"I read about it," Rachel said, "Did you know Pho is considered a breakfast meal?"

Ju laughed. "Wow! You know your soups."

Every Friday, Amanda would discuss life with Rachel. They'd walk along the school's grounds, and chat about life. Amanda knew everything about Rachel, including the fact that she still harbored anger in her heart over the cops killing her father. She wasn't prepared to move past that part of her life.

"You're going to dispatch those cops aren't you?" Amanda asked. "You've made some amazing breakthroughs with weapons to eliminate the Krptonian threat, but that doesn't please you, does it?"

"No," she said. She walked with her hands behind her back, and looked studious. "I find no catharsis in designing weapons. It doesn't alleviate the hurt I have in my heart."

"So, you're going to carry out your plans?" She asked.

"Not to follow through with my plans would make me a quitter, ma'am," she said, "I've never been a quitter."

"Then do what you must," she said, "But do it quietly."

Rachel was like a walking brain at the University. The instructors had a hard time giving her challenging work, and by the time she turned eighteen, the University granted her a PhD in Unified Field Theory. She discovered the primal forces that interlocked the universes. When in the lab with two other scientists, she was working on an elemental power. As she hit the tiny object with a burst of radiation, it had an adverse reaction, and a burst of energy hit her in the body. Her and the two scientists were passed out on the floor for a few hours when Ju discovered them. Rachel awoke immediately, but the other two scientists died on their way to the hospital. When the doctors ran a battery of test on Rachel, they didn't find anything wrong with her. They said her white blood cell count was a little high, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. A few days later, she noticed that she could change matter into anything she wanted. In addition, she could change into another human being at the mere thought. Her alter ego became Blackstarr. She could change matter on a cellular level. She could take something as innocent as a pen and turn it into a deadly bomb. Even though her powers had grown beyond anything most humans could comprehend, she continued to harbor hate in her heart for the police. On one hand, she could move between universes, but harbored feelings of hate that she couldn't let go on the other. Whenever an opportunity arose for her to smear the police, she was one of the first people on the scene. She even found herself stewing over Superman, and was happy that she had developed several Kryptonian based weapons to kill him.

Ju and her remained roommates all the way through college, and continued to be roommates after college. They had a lasting bond, a sisterly bond, and always protected each other at every turn. Rachel made sure Ju knew everything about her life, except for one critical thing: Ju didn't know how much Rachel hated the cops who killed her father. That was the only thing that Rachel kept hidden from Ju. She hated that she never voiced her feelings about the hate she felt for the cops, but she thought it was too much for their relationship to bear, especially since Ju's father was a cop.

Rachel visited the local Gyro Shop on the corner of Baker Street in National City, and sat at the counter to eat. It was a cozy diner with a strong lamb odor that she liked. She never took the vegetarian route in life; she liked her meat. The place was sparingly populated, and they were all black and Asian. It was the social hangout for the New Black Freedom Party who were fighting for justice reform. Almost all the people who visited the Gyro Shop were part of the New Black Freedom Party. Rachel had estimated the number of people associated with the party to be about fifty thousand, but only twelve hundred resided in National City. There were people of all different racial groups and backgrounds in the organization, but National City was a strong mixture of black and Asian. The Internet made it easy for people to apply for a membership, and they had chapters throughout the world.

As she took another bite of her greasy sandwich, she noticed an officer looking through the shop's window. At first, she didn't recognize him, but then it hit her that it was Officer David. Their eyes met for a second, and Rachel felt the madness flowing through her veins. She dropped her sandwich on the plate, and felt sick to her stomach. Officer David was a taller officer, and he walked with a slight limp. He had been in a major car accident a few years earlier, and Rachel had hoped he'd die. She thought the courts would charge him with the death of her father, but they promoted him to Detective. His mere presence disgusted her.

She tossed her gyro in the trash, and darted out the front door. Officer David continued to walk down the street, and she headed towards the police station on Lincoln. She stood in front of the local police department with a series of pamphlets on police brutality, and when pedestrians walked by, she would pass her literature to them. The police station was perched up on a hill, and a series of steps lead up to it. It was a huge building, but always had several people near the entrance of the place. She saw a large police officer with a patch over his right eye walk past her; he bumped into her and she almost fell over on the ground. "Watch it!"

"Get out of here, you fucking cockroach!" He had the ugliest grimace on his face, and Rachel immediately recognized his craggy mug, and it sent a shock wave of anger throughout her entire body. It was Officer David. She gasped. She had just seen him at the restaurant, and she thought he was walking in a different direction. She couldn't get over the fact that he smelled like rotten cheese. It didn't matter. She had lost all self control at this point, and wanted him to pay the price. She wanted to do what the justice system was unwilling to do.

"Yes, sir," she said. She grimaced. She pulled a metal pen out of her right pants pocket, and held it in her right hand. With her cosmic powers, she turned the pen into a bomb. She gave the pen a stern look, and it turned a glowing blue color, and then it looked normal. She ran up to Officer David, and slid the pen in his back pocket. She moved stealthy, and he didn't notice what she did. She, then, slithered back from the murderer, and heard a huge bang as soon as he entered the building. It didn't bother her that her actions caused a lot of collateral damage. As far as she was concerned, all the people associated with the justice system was criminal. She hated them all. The officer's flesh covered the inside of the building, and all the officers that didn't die could be heard moaning. The blast had torn through the front of the building, and at least seven officers died in the blast. Rachel walked away as if nothing happened, but the chaos was front page news.

Moments later:

The smell of burning flesh plagued the area; It was the worse smell imaginable, and Rachel hated it. The cops swarmed the area with their investigative teams, and she even noticed that an agent from the DEO arrived on the scene. There were people wearing all kinds of strange uniforms gathering evidence to try to figure out the crime. Rachel didn't care. Rachel stood across the street, and watched everything. A cop in her late twenties and early thirties arrived on the scene, and she looked up at the camera, so Rachel automatically looked up in the air too. She grabbed another female cop, and pointed up at the camera.

"It doesn't work," the cop said.

"What do you mean it doesn't work?"

"All the cameras are disabled in front of the police station."

"Fuck!" The late twenties and early thirties-something cop looked upset, and she acted belligerent towards the uniformed officer. "Get that shit fixed!"

Rachel looked up at the camera on top of the police station, and it had a film of rust with bird feces all over it. It didn't look like it worked, and she was happy about that. She had an idea of why none of the police cameras were operational, and that was because the cops wanted the ability to beat a suspect in front of the police station without consequences. She looked across the street at the camera attached to the convenience store, and it wasn't pointing towards the police station. The cops had ensured that the gas station's camera never recorded anything because it could be used as evidence against the cops. Rachel was pretty sure none of the cameras caught her.

It didn't take long for the news media to show up on the scene. Several stations were on the ground filming everything that they could. When CATCO drove up, she walked directly in front of their cameras, and the reporter tried to call her over for an interview.

"Did you see what happened?" The reporter asked.

"No. I didn't see anything," she said. She stopped for a moment, and saw a young woman with blond hair taking multiple photos of the building, and talking into a headset. She could see heat signatures, and something was completely different about the way her body processed heat. She wasn't anything like the other people in the area, and she automatically thought she might be some kind of meta-human. The woman from the DEO and the cop had a thing Rachel thought as they embraced. Rachel walked out of the area, around the corner, and sat back in the Gyro Shop. She drank a cola while texting on her phone to a handle called Old Lady.

Old Lady: Do you feel better?

Blackstarr: No. The same.

Old Lady: Catharsis may or may not come. Remember that.

Blackstarr: I'm only 1/5 into the mission. Catharsis will come.

Old Lady: Carry on.

And what of the consequences: will society allow the killing of sevent cops to go unpunished? That was a crazy idea she thought because the public would demand justice. Just the idea of somebody blowing up a precinct would put fear into the public, and she knew that. The cops would be combing through video camera footage for blocks, and she knew she'd be on some of them. Her saving grace was the fact that she was a small woman, a woman under five feet two, and nobody would believe she'd have the capabilities of blowing up a building without leaving a trace of evidence.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Maggie thoroughly went over every crevice of the police station, and mourned the death of Officer David and his six other comrades. His decapitated head set in the far corner of the room with a piece of plastic over it. She glanced over it, and thought she would throw up for a second. His lower body was completely decimated. It looked like potted meat all over the floor. She looked at the bits of flesh pressed against the wall and the floor, and felt sick to her stomach. The flesh had dried, but the police tape made sure no strangers entered the scene. The coroner had already moved the six other bodies who died from the violent impact. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail, collected as much evidence from the crime scene as possible. She looked over at her girlfriend, Alex, for a moment, and wish they had more time to work on their relationship. At first, she wondered if the officer blew up the place on purpose. But then again, she knew that Officer David wouldn't have done that because he was her mentor.

"Do we have video?" She asked a young female officer named Cooper.

"Nothing," she said. "We only have footage of when he entered the building."

Maggie pointed to the Camera on top of the police station. "What about that camera?" It was an older camera that didn't even look like it worked. All the cables to it had been clipped because it protected the cops who beat suspects on the way to the police station.

"It doesn't work at all," Officer Cooper said. Officer David ordered the wires cut on that camera several years back, and Maggie knew all about it. "We even checked the camera at Crunch And Munch."

"Yeah. What did you find?" Maggie looked across the street at the Crunch and Munch, and she knew none of the cameras pointed towards the police department. Officer David made sure of that because he didn't want any evidence of the crimes officers committed against suspects.

"Nothing," she said, "Nothing at all."

"Fuck."

Maggie signed the evidence over to Cooper, and said, "Log this." She looked up at the camera on top of the building. "And get that damn camera fixed."

For hours, Maggie drove around National City thinking about her old mentor. He had shown her how to do dirt on the job, but she never took his antics to heart. She loved the man like a father, but swore to never mistreat the public. She knew he wasn't a righteous man, but he was a decent cop. She grinned for a second, and thought, "That's not true. He was a horrible cop." In fact, she hated the man because of the way he treated people, and that was the reason she immediately put in a transfer after one month on the job with the guy. After she dropped him as a partner, he was put on desk duty. She knew he was one of five cops who put forty-nine bullets into an innocent man. The police force stood behind their lies, but most cops knew it was a coldblooded killing. It wasn't the first time that Officer David had killed a man under suspicious circumstances. Not only did he kill men on several occasions, but he raped a young black man with his baton at a National City night club. He shoved the baton inside the man rupturing his anus, and the man had to wear a bag for a year. He sued the city for forty million dollars, but before he could collect the money, he ended up dead. The media dug up the guy's past, and after talking about his unpaid parking ticket for a month straight every hour on the hour, most of National City thought the man had tried to assassinate the president. Nobody investigated his death, and they swept it under the rug.

Maggie found herself crying for a moment because of what she knew. She knew that she wasn't a good person, and no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn't ever forgive herself for not protecting the public from dirty cops. She was having a case of cognitive dissonance, and it was eating at her. She hated the way she felt about Officer David, but he was a bad man, and she knew it. She thought the man would retire, and die of alcohol poisoning, but now he was dead: killed in an explosion. He died in the most horrible way possible, and now she had to solve the case. It was the end of a dirty and despicable novel, and now the antagonist was dead, he could never infect another generation of cops with his corrupt ways.

When the report on the crime scene landed on Maggie's desk, she was shocked to find that no bomb residue of any type could be found in the area. She didn't know what kind of bomb could have exploded without leaving any discernible evidence. She couldn't do anything with the report because there wasn't enough information to make sense of it. She made a copy of the report, and then met up with Alex at the Alien Bar.

They grabbed a corner booth in the rear of the bar, and relaxed a bit. James Olsen and Kara were acting like girlfriend and boyfriend at the counter, but if Kara just looked at James as being in the friend zone, Maggie thought she had a funny way of showing it. Maggie set the folder down on the table, and passed it to Alex who viewed the contents.

"There's nothing here," Alex said, "No residue, no traces of a bomb whatsoever."

"Could it be alien?" Maggie asked, "Cops don't just blow up."

"Who would attack him?" Alex asked as she went through each of the pages. She was talking to Maggie as she looked closely at the photos of the crime scene. "Could it have been somebody he arrested?"

"Possible." Maggie grimaced for a moment. "On record, the man was a saint."

Alex looked up at her for a second. "But off record?"

"A criminal with a badge," she said with a grimace on her face. "There's a list of cops with the same or similar work history as David."

"What do you mean?" Alex asked.

"Planting evidence, shooting unarmed civilians, lying on record," she said, "There's a list of atrocities. I'm talking about robbing drug dealers."

Alex waved for a drink, and a young alien looking lady with a spotted bald head dropped off two whiskey sours. Alex drank her whiskey sour in one gulp, and then said, "The possibilities of the people who could have done this are endless."

Mon-El walked into the bar, and Maggie noticed that Kara immediately hopped up out of her seat. As if James wasn't in the room, she pulled him over to the dance floor, and started dancing in the middle of the room. James looked over at them, smiled, and then went back to drinking his drink. He had a look of disappointment on his face, and Maggie could read it. She walked over to James, placed her hand on his back, and said, "Just move on, man. This shit's painful to watch."

"What do you mean?" James asked. She looked over at Kara and Mon-El being buddy buddy on the dance floor. "I think you know what I mean." James sat quietly for a few more minutes, and she saw huge tears fall out of his eyes. He scuttled out of the side door of the club, and Maggie went after him. "James, you gonna be alright?"

James looked over at Maggie by the back door entrance, and said, "Why can't I be like stone?"

Maggie shrugged her shoulders. "You love her. I get it."

"It's like I've been punched in the heart, Maggie. I can't breathe when I'm around her," he said. He wiped the tears from his face, and his eyes were blood red. Maggie thought it was the alcohol. "I just need to disappear for a while."

"Man, I don't know what's up with the girl. You guys look like a couple for one minute, and then she's all over another guy."

"I know," he said.

"Next time. Don't go for the social butterfly," she said with a smile on her face. "I'm leaving you out here to collect your thoughts. You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah. I got it," James said as he wiped his face. Maggie went back into the club, but James stood in the back of the alley crying the good cry, and this time he didn't hold back. It was one of those painful cries where his face actually hurt from all the contortions. It was the kind of cry that if another man saw him, he'd turn away in complete disgust. It was one of those cries where people call for help when they see it. He was crying so loud that a squirrel walked up to him, and dropped off a nut. He cried so hard that he felt it all over his body, and he retched several times until he threw up all over the back alley. He imagined his father standing in front of him for a second. He was a strong man just as tall as James. He had broad shoulders with a strong face.

"You're just a baby," his father said with a scowl on his face. James was on all fours, looking up at his father. "You're not living up to my name being so soft."

"I'm a strong man," he said, "I have feelings." His voice was rough and full of phlegm.

"We all have feeling! But you don't wear them on your damn sleeve. You deal with the shit, and move the fuck on."

"Yes, sir. Yes, sir," he said. Suddenly, James looked up, and his father was gone. He grabbed the nut that the squirrel placed in front of him, and he laughed and thought somebody must have put something in his drink. "I'm crazy as fuck!"

He realized immediately that wasn't the case because he no longer had any anger towards Kara. He finally found that mental door needed to exit the relationship. James walked back into the club, looked at Maggie on the other side of the room, and she was by herself. The rest of the gang had left. He slid the nut into his pocket for safe keeping.

"Where'd everybody go?" James asked. In some ways, it upset him that everybody left, but he learned to live with it. For some reason, he felt distant from everybody, and he didn't understand why.

"They left," she said, "They thought you left."

"Oh. You stayed?" He looked at her with a befuddled look on his face because he thought she'd be the last person to stick around.

"Just wanted to make sure you're okay," she said, "But didn't want everybody knowing your business."

"I owe you one," James said. He smiled. It was only eleven o'clock, and the bar still had a large crowd in it.

"So, you okay?" She asked.

"Yeah. I had one of those deep deep cries," he said, "I flushed her out my system." James looked at her for a second, and noticed that she had been crying too. "Have you been crying?"

She laughed. "Yeah. I knew some of those cops who died today." She took a gulp of her drink. "They had their issues, but they were good men."

James waved for the barmaid, and she came over with an apple martini. It was James' goto drink, and he loved them. She placed it in front of him, and he handed her some dollars. "But there wasn't any bomb residue," James said, "That's what has me baffled by the case."

"That's the crazy part," Maggie said.

"How about the video footage? I know there wasn't any video footage from in front of the station, but ..."

"I'll call Officer Cooper to check video footage on the surrounding streets," she said, "if we can get a hit..." Maggie walked out the front door while James sat, and enjoyed his Apple Martini.

He looked up at the bar, and noticed a young alien woman staring back at him. She had orange hair with light green skin, but she was built like a female swimmer. Looking back at him, she had an olive in her mouth, and was being seductive with it. She twirled it around in her mouth, and that signified that she didn't mind performing fellatio.

When Maggie walked into the bar, she immediately told James, "I'm out. See you later."

"Okay," he said.

"Nothing came back on those cameras. It seems nobody has them running," she said.

Later that morning:

It was about one o'clock in the morning when the alien came over to James', sat down, and told him, "My name is Brenda Berry."

"James Olsen," he said. He shook her hand. It was soft to the touch. "You come here often?"

"All the time," she said, "I've seen you here a few times with that Kara."

'Yeah. She's my friend," he said, "You want to get out of here?"

"Okay," she said, "You got some protection."

"Yeah," James said. They walked out of the bar.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It was the summer of twenty eleven, and the sun beat against National City University campus. It was the main campus, and there wasn't that many people outside. It was the summer months, right after the Fourth of July, and most people were off for the summer, but not Rachel and Ju Gee. She never took time off from her studies; it was something that she refused to do, and Ju was always right there with her. She often shadowed Rachel, and made sure she was protected from people who might try to pick on her for her size. Rachel sat on the park bench doing some light reading on her tablet computer, and Ju had headed inside. It was about seven o'clock in the evening, and she was taking more than a full load of classes. She came across some notes that she had written on her tablet that mentioned several things that Amanda had told her, but she couldn't remember her saying them. She thought it was strange that she had several pages of notes, but couldn't remember the conversation taking place.

She immediately wrote, "I think somebody is erasing some of my memories. I can't remember any of the meetings I had with Amanda Waller, but I have things written down."

She had just turned twelve-years-old, and already had four bachelor degrees, and was working in the graduate program. She munched on a cup of fried rice that Ju Gee made, and she loved her cooking. The rice had bite size pieces of tangy chicken in it, and that was Ju's specialty. Rachel could easily munch on a bowl of rice for a few days, and that was all she would eat. Ju was constantly trying to push food in front of her because she would neglect her body during one of her long, three day study sessions.

Rachel sat on the edge of her bed, and looked over the notes on her laptop, and she had this written:

"Amanda isn't a human being. She might be the creature behind every child's nightmares."

She looked at that sentence for hours, but didn't know why she wrote it. It was just one sentence without any context, and she hoped that she would stumble on other information about Amanda that would make sense of that sentence.

Two weeks later, she noticed another sentence in her laptop that intrigued her. It said:

"Ju's the culprit behind your memory loss. She's a metahuman."

She looked up at Ju for a moment, and watched her as she read on her bed. It hurt her heart to imagine her friend doing something like that to her; but if it wasn't Ju, then who could it be? She didn't socialize with anybody except for her, but she didn't want to face that reality.

"How do you feel about me, Ju?" Rachel asked. She looked over at her with a lot of concern on her face. She reached on her nightstand, grabbed a box of crackers, and started eating some of them. She liked the way the bread caked on her teeth.

"I think you're fantastic," she said, "You're the smartest person I know."

"Do you like me?" She asked as she chewed on the crackers, and tried to wash it down her throat with a soda pop.

"What's that supposed to mean? Of course. Don't be silly," she said.

Rachel smiled sheepishly. "I like you too."

Lex Luther had sent her a brick of liquid kryptonite, and she was working on a formula to weaponize it. The green goo came in a glass in the shape of brick, and it was secure. It was a specialized glass harder than any steel on the planet. It kept the contents from leaking, and causing any unnecessary damages. She had a working theory that a granule of kryptonite would be enough to kill Superman with the right radiation treatment applied to it. She heard a light buzzing sound in the distance, and it was a bright, orb like ship descending near her position. None of the other students could see the ship, but because of her enhanced, meta-human powers, she could see the ship. It was Amanda Waller, the leader of Cadmus, paying her a visit. The ship's door opened, and Amanda walked out of it.

"You can see my ship?" She asked. She had a look of disbelief on her face.

"Yes, ma'am," she said with a straight, unflinching face. "It's bright."

"You're special indeed," she said, "Come? Take a trip with me?"

When she walked into the ship, it didn't seem to have any visible controls whatsoever. It was like Amanda controlled the ship with her mind. Rachel looked all around the ship, and everything looked like pure crystal. It was amazing.

"This ship comprises of alien technology," she said, "Ancient alien technology."

"What species?" Rachel asked.

"You've read Mythology?" She asked with a smile. "Of course you have. Some stories have a basis in reality."

"Which ones?" Rachel asked. She didn't think any of the stories had any basis in reality.

"Medusa," she said, "She arrived on the planet nearly a million years ago. She was part of a council of powerful beings who oversaw justice in the galaxy."

"Like the Lantern Corp?" Rachel asked.

"Exactly. Unfortunately, a war within the council took place, and its members scattered across the universe. Medusa crash landed her ship in Central Africa. She placed her broken ship into a cave, and it supplied her with food, clothing, and shelter." She flew the ship across National City. "The flashing lights in the cave scared the primitive humans, and since they couldn't explain the phenomenon, they called the cave, 'The Cave of the Gods.' "

"Interesting," Rachel said, "I've read tons of ancient literature, and never read that story."

Amanda smiled. "This ship was built off Medusa's technology. It's capable of spaceflight too."

"Interesting," Rachel said.

"For one hundred thousand years, the primitives worshiped Medusa's cave."

"What happen to her? Did she die?"

"Nope," she said, "She was an original. She wasn't a god, at least not in what we'd call a god. She was a superior being with superior technology." Rachel noticed that the ship was over Little Africa, and Amanda skimmed the skyline. "Look at those people down there. We've fallen so far as a people."

"What do you mean?" Rachel asked. She had an idea of what she meant, but she didn't want to be too chatty. She looked down at a group of black men beating another man on the ground, and felt sorry for all of them. She didn't quite understand the dynamics of the inner city. She had some theories, but didn't know how to apply them to the real world.

"Just about every major American city is the same," Amanda said, "It's a design. Look at them? Men standing around not being productive. Women selling themselves to feed their children." Rachel saw a young lady get into a car with an older man, and pull into a back alley. "I want to show you this because this is our world. This is the real world."

"I've never seen people like this," she said, "My father always tried to protect me."

"I know. Any sensible father with the willpower would protect his little girl from this nonsense," Amanda said with a grimace. "Every means for a people to fail is below us right now. We got the church on every corner used to keep people stupid and docile. The liquor stores destroy their inability to function. The inculcation of violent and misogynistic music stands in their way of unifying."

"Is there any hope?"

Amanda had a serious look on her face. "It's twenty eleven. The President is a black man. Nothing has changed for black people, and I want you to think about that for a moment. We have black PhDs, medical doctors, engineers, and businessmen, but none of them have a plan for black people."

"I can change this," Rachel said. She watched a man light a car on fire, and then run down the street. "Jobs and education is truly the key, and if we built a plant that manufactured Kryptonian based weapons, then that will bring jobs."

"We can do better than that," Amanda said. She had her arms folded. "Didn't you enhance the brains of some lab rats last year?"

"Yes. I changed those rats on a cellular level," she said, "But that drug isn't ready for human trials." She couldn't believe what Amanda was implying. The thought of using untested drugs on human beings was appalling to her on every level. What kind of monster would do such a thing?

"Look down there," Amanda said. She pointed at the guys on the street attacking a woman walking with her child. "Nobody will care if you experimented on them, or any of these people."

"But that's savage!"

"Sometimes you have to be a savage when dealing with savages," Amanda said, "That's the hard truth, girl."

Rachel looked down at the men on the street attacking a black woman, and they beat her into the street. It was a horrible sight, and Amanda wouldn't do anything about it. It hurt Rachel to her core. She hated everything she saw, and it was the hardest lesson of her life. "Can you take me back to the campus please?" She felt distraught over what Amanda was saying. Her heart was racing faster than usual. She could feel it thumping in her chest.

"Look," she said, "They removed her head." She grabbed Rachel by the chin, and pointed her face towards the chaos in the streets. Rachel cried.

"You're hurting me," she complained.

"You're going to have to toughen up if you want to kill those monsters who killed your daddy, or have you forgotten?"

"No, ma'am," she snapped. She had tears rolling down her face.

"This is a cruel world, and it's even crueler when you're soft."

"I'm not soft," Rachel said.

"You seem soft to me. You seem like you're not willing to do what needs to be done." Amanda flew the ship over a darkened alley, and displayed the immediate area on the overhead, flat screen monitor. The picture was crystal clear. It was a video of an Asian man having sex with a young lady bent over some milk crates.

"Is that?" Rachel said. Her voice cracking.

"Yeah. That's your roommate's father," she said, "He's produced more blasian babies than all the black guys did during the Vietnam War." Laughing, she turned off the monitor, and then said, "Well. That's not true, but a lot of kids call him daddy."

"This can't be," she said, "Ju doesn't know about this."

"Everybody uses black folk," Amanda snapped, "So, when you do your experiments down there, you won't be any different from anybody else."

"But I don't want to be like anybody else."

"I can take you to Gotham right now, and they got little black boys and girls living in the sewers. I can take you to Metropolis, and they have black kids working in sex houses in the Suicide Slum. Hell, you enhance these black folks, and they'll be grateful because they'll be ruling the world. So, if you want to help them, you can."

Six years later, Rachel sat in the living room of her apartment, and thought about what Amanda had told her all those years earlier. She laughed at herself because for so many years she feared Amanda Wallace, and even until this day, she had great respect for the woman. She had a lot of theories about her, and many of them ended with her being Medusa. She had an evilness about her that was inexplicable, and she had no true feelings for any man or woman.

Rachel spent many years working on a way to change Little Africa to a productive part of society. Over three thousand people had been killed in Little Africa since Amanda and her had that particular talk. They had thousands of talks over the years, but that was the only one where she thought Amanda was going to throw her out of the ship. Normally, she was a pretty calm woman until it came to Little Africa, and places like that. She had made a particle generator that could send a blast throughout the black side of town, and give most people enhanced powers. It was the right thing to do in Rachel's mind since their impoverished conditions had more to do with policies than genetics. If the people in Little Africa could circumvent the racism and the policies by enhancing them, then she felt in her heart that doing that was the right thing to do.

Rachel had seen a picture of a woman who looked similar to Amanda Waller from nineteen thirty-two in an old medical journal, and it made her nervous. Rachel spent hours staring at the photo, and it drove her crazy because there was no way that the woman in the photo could be her. But at the same time, she knew that something was different about Amanda, but didn't want to say anything about it. According to the article, Amanda had developed a meta-virus at Tuskegee Institute, and infected two hundred black men with it. For two years, the experiment went by without any measurable results. Rachel dug up all the information she could about the experiment, but the medical journal didn't cover what happen to the participants. She was afraid to ask what happened in the experiment, because people had a way of disappearing around her. The doctor's name in the article was Doctor Amanda Walker.

When Rachel received her first doctorate at the age of thirteen, she sat on a clandestine military meeting held two miles underground in Metropolis. She was nervous about the meeting, and didn't want to attend, but Amanda insisted that she go. She sat on the far side of the room, and none of the high ranking officials paid any attention to her until General Nathan Rex entered the room. The first thing he asked was, "What is a fucking kid doing in the room?"

"That's Doctor Ballard," Amanda Waller said.

"She looks like a child."

"She is. She's one of the smartest beings on the planet," Amanda said, "And you will respect her."

Rachel assumed he was a new member of the board because he didn't show Amanda the proper respect, and he snarled at her when she spoke to him. She sat in the front of the room wearing her regular civilian clothes, and wasn't dressed like the other generals. She looked like a normal citizen off the streets, but all members in attendance gave her the proper respects. They talked to her like she was in charge, and when she spoke, they listened. They treated her like the president; but when she said, "We have to prepare for a rogue Superman now, or face the consequences of our inaction."

General Rex must not have liked what she said because the big burly man jumped to his feet, and said, "Who the fuck are you?"

Immediately, everybody in the room apologized for the General, but Amanda said, "Don't answer for him."

General Lane said, "Oh shit."

"General Rex, do you know who I am?" Amanda asked. She looked serious, but not angry. It was a simple question, but a loaded question.

"Don't know and don't care," he snapped. General Lane put his head in his hands, and he looked stressed. The other Generals backed away from the table.

Amanda stood to her feet, and asked, "What did you say?"

"I said, 'I don't know..."

And before he could get out the rest of his statement, a beam shot out of Amanda's right hand, and General Rex dissolved in front of Rachel's eyes. She had no idea that Amanda had that kind of power. General Rex's ashes were sitting in a pile where he stood, and all the other Generals scooted their chairs up to the table, and the meeting continued. Rachel sat back, and kept her thoughts to herself.

Amanda looked over at General Lane, and said, "I want General Rex's position filled by the end of the week."

It was funny because it was Friday.

Current time,

Rachel traveled to the rougher parts of National City where the lowly white trash people lived. She had a lot on her mind because Ju had been getting massive nosebleeds. She tried to get her to go the doctor, but she refused. She kept saying that she was low on iron. It scared Rachel every time she woke up in the middle of the night, and watched Ju baby a massive nosebleed. She decided to take some time away from her, and traveled to the East Side of National City.

It was a drugged out community with a lot of people on meth and other illicit drugs. She looked like a small child compared to most nineteen-year-old teenagers, but she didn't let that bother her. She enjoyed taking the bus and she enjoyed walking—even though she could fly. She wasn't too keen on flying for some reason. Most of the beings with the ability to fly enjoyed it, but not Rachel. She had many hours honing her skills with Amanda, and that was probably the reason she didn't enjoy it. Amanda had a way of sucking the fun out of the littlest things because she demanded perfection in everything she did. Failure in her eyes was met with swift and painful punishments. The way that Rachel learned how to fly was when she was around sixteen, and Amanda pushed her out of her invisible ship. Rachel didn't know that she could fly, and thought Amanda was trying to kill her. She had told Amanda that she had a dream that she could fly, and when she awoke, she was actually bumping her head on the ceiling. Amanda then invited her for a ride on her invisible ship, and when she was in the clouds, she showed Rachel the door, and pushed her out the ship. Rachel screamed so loudly and had her eyes closed until she realized that she was floating right next to the ship. Amanda was waving at her from the cockpit, and gave her the thumbs up. Rachel didn't think it was funny.

When Rachel exited the bus on the rough side of National City, she ran into a lot of young people bumming on the streets. She had no idea so many kids were actually living on the street. She lived in a nice apartment on the upper side of town with Ju, and didn't realize that people lived in such harsh conditions. Amanda had told her on several occasions that she was protected from the real world, and now that Rachel had seen it, she didn't like it.

It was obvious why Rachel was on the roughest parts of National City, and it had to do with one particular cop who policed the area. She had been keeping tabs on Officer Monroe for several months, and learned that he had a mistress that lived in the Oak Tree apartments named April Polanski. She had a nasty habit of posting all her information on the Said-It App, and that was how Rachel was able to track her down. The apartments were only three blocks from the bus stop, and they were dilapidated: broken doors, smashed windows, leaky roof, and it smelled badly. She sat on the front steps of the apartment building, and waited for Officer Monroe to arrive. She had written on her Said-It App that her man was on his way. She automatically assumed it was Officer Monroe. He usually came by the woman's apartment around nine o'clock in the evening.

"Who the hell are you, kid?" Officer Monroe said. He stood directly in front of her in his messy uniform. He looked unkempt: dirty shoes, wrinkled pants, and worn jacket. He didn't look anything like the cop who killed her father. He suffered from hair loss, and had a missing front tooth. "Get the fuck out the way, kid!"

"Sorry," she said. She scooted over so he could walk past her, but she didn't say anything else to him. She sat quietly as he walked up the creaky stairs, and entered into her apartment. Patiently, she waited on the stairs for him to exit the apartment, and it took him forty minutes to finish his business. When he scurried past her, he was itching his crotch as if he had the crabs. He was a disgusting man, and Rachel wanted to kill him, but she needed to wait. She needed a plan.

Rachel walked up to April's apartment, and knocked on the door. It took some time for April to answer the door because she was tweaking from the drugs. She let Rachel in without saying anything, and then leaped onto the dirty couch.

"I don't usually do girls," April said. Her speech was slurred and she had sores on her mouth. She had blond hair, but it was thinning. She was around twenty-one years old, but she looked much older. "Just give me a minute."

Rachel walked around her house for a moment, and couldn't believe the mess. It was like she never cleaned anything. When she opened up her refrigerator, all the food was moldy. It stank so badly that she worried she'd catch something from the rotting food. "She's nasty." On the floor, she found one pain pill, and with her superpowers, she was able to chemically change some aspirin in her purse to the same pain pills. She needed the item to produce the item, but after she produced it one time, she had it to memory, and could do it anytime after that. She produced over one hundred pain pills by tampering with the chemical properties of the aspirin. She found a baggy in one of the cabinets, but when she opened the cabinet, the door fell completely off, and smashed to the floor.

"What's going on in there?" April asked.

"Just getting some water," Rachel said. She looked at the sink full of dirty dishes and moldy food, and wondered how a human being could live in such nastiness. She walked back into the living room, and April was sitting up on the couch, but her eyes were barely opened. She had a pack of cigarettes on the table, and a couple of fifty dollar bills underneath it. "Are you okay?"

"Just tweaking and shit," she said, "What do you want?" She picked up the money from underneath the cigarettes, and laughed. "Fucker robs drug dealers all day, and all I get is one hundred bucks for sucking his dick." She laughed. "Whore by birth." She snickered.

Rachel looked at her for a moment, and thought the woman was crazy. "How did you get like this?"

"Every guy my mom fucked, fucked me," she said with a snarl. "I had more ding dongs in me before sixth grade than a Catholic Priest."

"Ugh. What can you tell me about Officer Monroe?" Rachel asked.

She laughed, and covered her mouth at the same time. Her meth use had rotted her teeth so badly that she was embarrassed by it. "I wouldn't call him an officer." She crossed her legs, and sat up. "Just a damn criminal with a badge."

"What are you saying?"

"He's killed innocent people," she said. She pulled a cigarette out of the pack, and lit it. "I don't know how a man with kids of his own thinks so little about life."

"Do you have kids?" Rachel asked.

April looked serious for a moment, and said, "Three kids, but the state took them." She looked around the apartment for a second. "They're better off without me. The world is better off without me." She started to cry.

Rachel pulled out the pills, placed them on the table, and slid them over to her. April grabbed the pills tossed a handful in her mouth, and flushed it down with some old soda pop that was on the edge of the table. It had cigarette butts in the soda, but she didn't mind. She just grabbed it, twisted off the cap, and drank it with no problem. She didn't even flinch. Rachel did, but she didn't. "When will Monroe return?"

"Tomorrow. He'll need his fix."

"Okay. Well. You have plenty of pills?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Okay then. You have a nice night."

"You don't want to fuck?"

"Oh. No. No. That's okay. I had plenty earlier," Rachel said.

She left the woman's apartment immediately, and didn't have any qualms about what she had to do. Officer Monroe was a man who needed to die, but she decided to kill April in the process. She was twenty-one, and had already wasted her life. She had three kids, and the state took them. It was disconcerting to her that somebody could live in such dysfunction. She knew exactly what she needed to do. All she had to do was give April enough heroin to kill her, and then turn an object into her. During her training, she often used simple flour to transform into human beings. She could turn some flour into April, and then have her kill Officer Monroe; it was an easy process. The trick lasted for forty minutes, and then she would turn to dust.

The Next Night…

Rachel walked up to April's apartment at eight-thirty that evening with a baggie of heroin. It was some of the strongest heroin on the market. She had swiped it from the University's laboratory, and said that she was using it for an experiment. She had access to everything she needed, including weapons grade anthrax. April opened the door, and when she saw the heroin, she didn't hesitate to show a vein. Rachel wrapped the plastic tubing around her arm, and waited for a vein to pop up. She shoved the needle into her arm, and filled her full of heroin. It didn't take her long for her to expire. Rachel picked her up, took her to her bedroom, and shoved her under the bed.

She grabbed a bag of flour out of the cabinet. It was an old bag of flour, and it had mites in it. She looked at it, and said, "Gross." She poured the flour on the floor. It was just a pile of flour, and she could see the mites crawling in it. Placing her hands over the flour, a blue energy came out of her hands and into the flour. It bubbled over like molten lava, and then formed into April.

She heard Officer Monroe coming up the steps, rap on the door, and then opened it up. April's clone stood up, and it was completely naked, robust, and looking healthy. She walked over to Officer Monroe, and gave him a huge kiss on the lips.

"You're not usually this into it," he said with a smile. "You look good."

"It's for you," she said, "It's all for you."

Rachel sat on the kitchen floor, and listened to the conversation. She kept completely quiet because she wanted to see if her creation would follow through with the plan.

"I brought you what you like," he said. He opened up a sack, and pulled out some meth. "This is the good shit."

"Not yet," she said, "Let's do it first."

"Do it first?" He asked. "You always want to get high first."

"Not today," she said.

Rachel peeked around the corner, and saw that he had his hands between her legs. "You're really wet down there. Not dry like last night."

She laughed. "I'm not dehydrated today." She pulled down his pants, and gave him fellatio. When he cocked his head backwards, Rachel saw April signal for a knife. Rachel threw a knife to April, and she caught it in the air. It didn't take her any time to slice through his penis. It caused Rachel to cringe when she saw it.

"Damn. That stings a little, baby," he said. He looked down at the blood shooting from his wound, and then he started screaming. "Oh, god! What have you done to me." He pulled out his gun, shot April in the face, and she turned into dust. "What the fuck?"

Rachel walked into the living room, and said, "This is for Richard Ballard." A beam shot out of her finger, and it split him in half.

Meanwhile,

The Guardian hopped on his motorcycle, and raced through National City because of a criminal element trying to knock over a jewelry shop. When he arrived on the scene, there were four miscreants running from the store. They all wore black clothing with face mask.

"You punks have messed up," Guardian said with a raspy, somewhat electronic voice. A laser shot out of his right fist, and hit one of the assailants in the chest. He fell to the ground in pain. He hit the criminal with some kind of binding agent, and he wasn't able to move after that. Hopping on his bike, he raced around the corner, and roped all the other guys, and tied them up. When he heard the police sirens, he took off down the street.

He looked up in the air, and saw something that looked like a missile racing across the night sky, but didn't know what it was. It was moving just as fast as Supergirl, but it wasn't her.

"Winn!" Guardian was talking through his headset. "Meet me at the Alien Club."

"Roger," he replied.

Later that night,

James sat at the table in the far back corner with Winn, and he had his usual: Apple Martini and two beers. He reflexively looked into the corner for Maggie and Alex, but they hadn't made their way to the Alien Bar yet. And needlessly to say, he looked over at the bar to see if Kara had made her way to the bar, but nothing. She wasn't there, and it was somewhat of a relief. He knew when she did show up that she wouldn't let the Guardian situation merely drop. She wasn't the kind of person to drop an issue until she had proven her point to the tenth degree. Winn drank whiskey; he liked the hard stuff, and it was his go to drink. He asked for an entire bottle, but James asked him to slow it down a bit. It wasn't the end of the week, and everybody had to get up in the morning. Nonetheless, Winn liked what he liked, and he took shots of whiskey whenever he could get them.

James was highly upset with Kara over how she reacted to him being the Guardian, and it was obvious. She acted like she and Mon-El was the only people allowed to be heroes in National City. He thought she acted disrespectful towards him, and it bothered him a lot. He searched his feeling for a minute to see if he still wanted to be with her, and he wasn't feeling it. Somehow that little cry he had flushed his system of her, at least he thought. He truly felt that if she walked into the bar, and said, "I want you to be my man," that he'd turn her down without any regrets.

Yet, he was upset with Kara over how she reacted to him as the Guardian, and her distrust made him evaluate his feelings for her. He had too many emotions happening at one time to properly evaluate his feelings for her. Now, he didn't feel her in his heart, and he didn't know what to make of that.

"So, how you feel, James," Winn asked. He took a sip of his whiskey. "I know Kara hurt you, man."

"Man. She came at me hard tonight," he said. He looked over his shoulder for a split second to ensure Kara wasn't in the room. She had a way of sneaking up on people. "It hurts because she doesn't trust us."

"I know right?" Winn called the waitress over, and ordered some more whiskey, and James ordered two more Apple Martinis. "I didn't think she'd reacts that way."

"What did she tell us when she returned from that other Earth?" James asked.

"Oh. That that Arrow guy didn't trust her," Winn said.

"I think she treats us just as badly," James said. He shook his head slightly in disbelief. "I'm probably being dramatic because she broke my heart."

Winn shook his head as to say yes, and then said as a matter of factly, "Yeah. Nobody understands that nonsense. I thought you guys were like this." He crossed his fingers on both hands and held them up to James. "I'm still baffled about what happened."

"Oh. Earlier, I saw another being flying through the air. It wasn't Supergirl either," James said. "Could it be another Kryptonian?"

"Possible," he said, "It's highly probable a dozen or more are flying under the radar."

Three days later:

James, Winn, and two alien girls named Carla Kilgore and T'Nal P'noc sat on the patio outside of James lavish apartment, and looked over the city. The ladies had bluish skin with long, dark black hair, and nice smiles. Winn and James had met them the previous night in the Alien Bar. James had his eyes on T'Nal P'noc because he liked her smile and firm body. James sat behind T'Nal, and slowly massaged her shoulders. She was soft to the touch, and he enjoyed being with her. A couple of times when he gently caressed her back, he looked across the way at Kara's apartment, and wondered if she was watching. Suddenly, he heard a rap on his door, and he ran inside to answer it. When he opened the door, it was Maggie.

"I need the Guardian to do some research for me," she said.

"What's up?" James asked.

"Missing cop on the East Side," she said, "He hasn't reported in for the last three days." She handed James a picture of the cop. "His name is Monroe, and he was undercover with the transit system." She looked out on the patio, and said, "Glad you're moving on."

"Thanks to you," James said. He hugged Maggie.

"You're welcome."

Later that evening:

The Guardian raced across town, and when he arrived on the East Side, he noticed an awful smell coming out of the dilapidated apartment building on Sixth Street. It reminded him of the stint he spent in Iraq filming the bloody battles when he accidentally came upon a pile of bodies in a small house on the outskirts of Baghdad. After four years, the smell hadn't left his mind. It smelled so badly that it caused him to come to a slow roll as he passed the building. Hopping off his motorcycle, he called Winn on the radio. "Something is dead in this old apartment complex."

"Could it be an animal?" Winn said.

"Maybe. Honestly, I'm going with dead human. I know that smell." James thought back when he took the photos of those dead Iraqis in the small house. They looked like a regular family, but the killers had sprawled a message on the wall that said, "Traitors." It was something that he couldn't erase from his memory. He had never smelled anything like that in his entire life, and the smell coming from the apartment complex was similar.

He quickly ran up the dilapidated stairs, and was right outside the apartment where the smell was the strongest. When he tried to open the door, it was locked. He kicked the door in with his right foot, and he saw Officer Monroe's upper torso on the other side of the room. His lower body was near the couch. He could hear the maggots as they crawled through his decaying body. The smell was so strong he stumbled out of the apartment, and back into the street. He didn't know what could have split the cop's body in half, but there were so many metahumans in National City that any of them could have done it.

He sent a quick text to Maggie.

Guardian: Your cop friend is dead.

Maggie: OMG!

Guardian: He's in that old apartment on sixth street.

Maggie: Stay there. I'm coming alone.

Guardian: Okay.

When Maggie arrived on the scene, the Guardian and her headed back up to the apartment. When she saw Monroe's body cut in half, she couldn't believe it. "What could have done this?"

"It's probably a metahuman," James said. He walked over to the bedroom, and saw a woman's hand protruding from underneath the bed. "Maggie, come see this?"

Maggie entered the room, and looked under the bed. Maggots were coming out of the young lady's face, and Maggie nearly threw up when she saw it. "Shit! The smell."

"It's the worse," the Guardian said.

Maggie and the Guardian stepped out into the street, and she called for backup. "Go ahead, and take off. Alex and I will probably be at the Alien Bar later. We need to talk."

"Okay. Be careful," the Guardian said.

Later at the Alien Bar:

Maggie and Alex sat in the far corner and James and Winn set opposite of them in the booth. Maggie looked completely drained of color.

"Where's Kara?" James asked.

"You're kidding?" Alex asked. "She won't come because she said she can't support you."

James looked down at the table for a minute. "Huh. That's crazy. Maybe she'll have a change of heart."

"I don't know. She's pretty adamant about this, James."

Maggie shook her head in frustration. "Sheesh. She's being a baby about this."

"That's my sister," Alex snapped.

"She's still being a baby, Alex," Maggie said.

Alex grimaced at Maggie, and then said, "Let me out. We'll meet up later to discussed this." Alex brushed past Maggie, and headed out the front door.

"You're going after her?" Winn asked.

"Hell no. Kara's being a baby when she doesn't get her way," she said, "And this is serious business."

"This is the second cop killed," James said abruptly. He wanted to change the conversation because he didn't want any friction between Alex and Maggie.

"Not only that. They were partners for almost twenty years," Maggie said.

"The killer might be somebody they arrested," Winn said.

"I'm going to let you two on a little secret," Maggie said.

"What's that?" James asked.

"These two cops were notorious for killing innocent people," she said, "The city protected them. It's even possible they were hired hands."

"How many people did they kill?" James had a look of disbelief on his face.

"Could be ten. Could be twenty," Maggie said, "It's a few."

"Just these two cops?" James asked.

"There was an addition two cops with them," she said, "There was an officer named Carter who turned them all in, and he was booted from the police force."

"What's he doing now?" Winn asked.

"He's a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School," Maggie said.

"That's in Little Africa," James replied, "Wait? Were the other two officers Casey and Lacey."

"Yeah. They worked together," Maggie said, "I actually misspoke. I meant they killed togehter."

"What do you know?" Maggie asked.

"Well. These were the cops that killed Doctor Rachel Ballard's father," James said, "She's a professor over at National City University."

"She's shorter than five feet tall," Winn said, "She was my Physics professor. I think she was thirteen at the time."

"How old is she now?" Maggie asked.

"About nineteen," James said, "I saw her at my gym, and like Winn said, she's less than five feet tall."

"Could she be metahuman?" Maggie asked.

"Possible. She finished four Bachelor degrees in one year," James said, "She might be some kind of Brainiac metahuman."

"Winn, can you check all the camera footage around that apartment building on sixth street?" Maggie asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"Meantime, we need to warn the other officers," James said, "I can tail Lacey since he patrols my area of town. He has a membership at my gym."

"I got Casey," Winn said.

"Okay. I'll take Carter," Maggie said, "It's been awhile since I've roamed Little Africa."

The Next Morning:

It was Friday, the morning, about six o'clock in the morning, and James stood outside the front of the gym in his sweats. He was waiting for Officer Lacey; he usually arrived around six-fifteen in the morning. He was writing a text to Snapper about checking his email for the pictures of the crime scene that he had taken on the previous night.

James: Snapper, check your email. I sent you some pictures from Officer Monroe's crime scene.

Snapper: Got'em. Thanks.

As soon as Snapper sent his reply, he saw Officer Lacey walk up the steps to the gym. He was a muscular guy, white, with short blond hair. He had a swastika, rebel flag tattoo on his right bicep, and he wasn't shy about showing it. When James approached him, he instinctively became defensive, and reached for his handgun.

"Slow your roll," James said, "I'm here to help you."

"Help me?" Officer Lacey spit on the ground. "I don't need no funking help from niggers."

Frustrated, James tried to talk to him, but he held up his right hand, and said, "Back the fuck up, shit skin."

James looked out into the street as Officer Lacey walked past him, and he thought to himself, "If he dies, he dies." He asked himself several times if he cared about Officer Lacey, and he couldn't find any reason to care. In fact, he wondered for a second what was it he was trying to protect in the first place. If Officer Lacey represented the caliber of people that needed his protection, then maybe he was on the wrong side of justice.

Walking into the main entrance of the gym, he looked down the hallway, and headed directly for the weight-room area. He saw Ju Gee working out on the weight machines, and he approached her. She had on some baggy sweat pants with a sports bra.

"Ju, have you seen Rachel?" James asked.

"She's in the restroom," She said.

Suddenly, he heard several ladies screaming, and he didn't know what to make of it. He ran towards the danger, and he saw Officer Lacey on the ground, and Rachel was holding his head in her hands. She looked peaceful to some degree. She didn't have an expression on her face at all. She was a diminutive woman holding a cop's severed head wearing sweats and a sports bra.

"What have you done?" James asked.

Rachel looked at him, and started walking in the other direction.

James pulled back his right arm sleeve, and exposed his deionized weapon.

Rachel said, "That's not a wise choice, Guardian."

James gasped. "How do you know that?"

"I'm in your mind," she said, "Two more dirty cops, and I'll be done. I'm heading to Little Africa. That's where the last two cops are."

"I'll stop you," James said.

She laughed. "I'm Karma, Guardian. Remember that as you interfere with my justice."

Rachel disappeared down the hallway, and James didn't know what to make of what happen. Officer Lacey's headless body laid on the ground in front of him, and he wasn't mad about it. He wanted to be upset about it, but he wasn't. He took his phone out, and text Maggie the situation.

James: Officer Lacey's dead.

Maggie: Dammit!

James: She's headed your way.

Maggie: We'll need the Guardian.

James: Okay.

Later that morning:

The morning air brushed past him, and seeped into the crevices of his suit; it felt cool. The Guardian raced across town, and he heard a voice in his helmet. It was a soft voice, a female voice, and it was a calm voice. When he first heard it, he didn't know what to make of it because Winn was the only person who could talk to him.

"I'm not a bad person," a woman's voice said.

"Who's this?" the Guardian asked.

"Rachel."

"I'm coming to stop you, Rachel," James warned.

"You don't want to do that," she said, "I'm stepping in where justice failed to do so."

"What gives you the right to decide what's justice?" James asked.

"When society fails to punish, then the good among us must. My father didn't deserve to die. Those cops killed him for no reason, and now they must pay."

"But you're going to dole out retribution?" James asked.

"Yes. Final retribution," she said. She paused for a moment. "Something is blocking my mental abilities. Just stay away, James. I don't want to hurt you."

"I can't."

James didn't know why he needed to stop her so badly because he wanted to kill the people responsible for his father's death. No kid wanted to grow up without a daddy. In front of the gigantic warehouse that sat right in the worse part of Little Africa Rachel and Officer Casey stood in front of each other. He had drawn his gun, and had it pointed at her head. Maggie stood on the other side of the street with her gun pointing directly at the professor, and Winn was down the street in his van. Officer Casey was a balding older man with a beer gut, and he was an essential part of the local drug market. He supplied many of the dealers, and they paid him a lot of money.

When James rolled up on the scene, he noticed several snipers on the rooftops, and they were all gangsters who rode with Officer Casey.

"Lie down, Rachel," Maggie screamed.

"That's Doctor Ballard to you," she said. Rachel turned to Maggie, and said with a scowl. "You can leave. I'm not here for you."

"Can't do that," Maggie Replied.

"What the hell is going on?" Officer Casey asked. He looked at the young lady, and said, "This child is supposed to scare me?"

The more Rachel talked, the more the Guardian felt, humanizing and beautiful. He didn't want to see her hurt, and he tried to get her to lie on the ground. "Stand down, Rachel."

"I can't, James. I came here for one reason," she said.

"Stand down," Maggie ordered.

Officer Casey fired several rounds at her, as did the snipers, and all the bullets froze in the air. Suddenly, Rachel disappeared and then reappeared, and then Officer Casey dropped to the ground—dead. She had dismembered the guy's arms and legs.

"I didn't want you to see that," Rachel said. She walked down the roadway, and Maggie screamed for her to stop. When she pointed her weapon at Rachel, her gun turned red hot, and she dropped it to the ground. "I have one more to kill."

James realized then that he never planned on attacking Rachel because he realized that bad cops needed off the streets. He didn't say anything about that to Maggie because she didn't seem to have a moral barometer when it came to bad cops. She had mentioned on several occasions that she knew the cops were killing people, and that meant, at least in James' mind, that Maggie was okay with bad cops. Under no circumstance should a cop be on the streets who murdered unarmed people.

Later that day:

Rachel walked past a young woman with a worn face, light skin, and black hair. Her eyes were black, and her lips were thin and red, and she was loud. She was very loud. She was the kind of loud that made her unpleasant to be around, and she acted on pure emotion. She walked past an old man, greeted him with, "What the fuck you lookin' at, nigga?" It made Rachel finched.

"Shouldn't your ass be in school?" The old man asked, "Damn degenerate."

Rachel assumed the young woman's appearance, but frankly and assertively, she didn't care for her. The old man looked over at her in a state of awe, but Rachel kept walking towards the school. Suddenly, she flew into the air, and landed on the school grounds behind an oak tree. It had a huge trunk that completely concealed her landing. She kept her calm, and walked into the building with the rest of the students. It was a huge school. It had nearly fifteen thousand students, and every entrance had metal detectors.

There were so many cops on the school's ground that she didn't know how any learning happened. It was upsetting. She walked down the hallway, and into Miss Nater's classroom, a history classroom that was the austeric room she had ever seen for a history class.

"Hi, Candy," a young nerdy kid said with a red, Star Trek shirt on.

"James, you know the red shirt always dies?"

"Not this red shirter. I'm Spock," he said.

She looked at the side of his head, and asked, "Where's the ears?"

"Patty said that she'd kill me if I wore them," he said, "You know how she gets."

Rachel traced Candy's memories of James, and he was actually her cousin. He was an extremely smart kid, but developed a fixation on television and comics after a gang member murdered his father. His best friend was an Asian girl named Patty Lee, but he called her Peppermint. They had been best friends since first grade, and lived right across from each other in an old, dilapidated apartment .complex.

In the last few days, Rachel noticed her powers of mental manipulation increased, and she didn't know the reason. It seemed the farther she traveled from her apartment, the stronger she grew. When she was at home, she could barely read minds, but once she stepped into Little Africa, her ability to read thoughts ignited. She wondered if something in her apartment had been blocking her memories.

Patty strolled into the classroom with her red hair, almond shaped eyes, and slender frame, and said to James, "You got my sticky icky."

"Right here, Peppermint." He handed her a bag full of peppermint balls, and she quickly stuck one in her mouths.

"That's the sticky that makes the world go around."

Rachel smiled for a moment because she thought their nerdism was cute, but she immediately became angered when Miss Nater walked into the classroom. She passed a note to the young man on the front seat, but Rachel didn't think too much about it. She sensed the two had an illicit relationship, but she didn't pry. She was in the school to find Mister Carter, and end his life, but she wanted to experience what the kids in Little Africa were learning.

Miss Nater pulled out her brief case, grabbed a romance novel, and started reading to herself. The kids in her class were talking loudly about girls, guys, and whatever nonsense popped in their heads. This went on for about fifteen minutes, or at least until Rachel looked up at the clock.

"What the fuck are you doing? Rachel asked in the rudest manner. "How dare you just sit there, and not teach us?"

Miss Nater slowly placed her book on the desk, and asked, "Now you want to learn?"

"You're not a babysitter. You're responsible for developing young minds."

The class burst out in laughter, and a huge, burly teen named Big Frank stood up, and said, "Shut up, skank."

Rachel slowly turned to him, but she looked like Candy, and politely said, "It appears I have to make an example out of you."

Big Frank walked over to her, placed his knuckles on her desk, and said, "Hit me with your best shot."

Rachel grabbed him by the waist, and chucked him into the corner of the room. She held up her right hand, and made her fingers look like a two prong hook, and said, "Put your throat in my hand, and choke your fucking self." He looked up at her, and she slapped him into the floor. When he rose up again, she slapped him back to the ground, and his front tooth flew out of his mouth.

"Please stop," Miss Nater pleaded.

Rachel looked back at her, and said, "You have five minutes to start your lesson." She looked around at the kids, and they were shocked by the situation. She had a nasty scowl on her face. "It's a cruel world. It's even crueler when you're stupid."

Miss Nater quickly set up her projector. Rachel stood in the middle of the classroom looking at her. Big Frank crawled over to his chair, and didn't say anything else.

"Don't let me come in here tomorrow, and you're not teaching. I'll gut you from your vagina to your fucking throat."

When Rachel sat down in her chair, James whispered in her ear, "I thought you were illiterate. You know with your dyslexia and all?"

After History class, Rachel walked quietly down the hall, and she could hear the students whispering about what had taken place. She didn't have Mister Carter's English class until third period, and her second period class comprised of hanging out in the Computer Lab with Miss French, a scrawny, somewhat nerdy science teacher. Miss French talked with a high pitched, annoying voice that drove most people insane, if they listened to her long enough. She sat quietly in the back of the computer room in a makeshift office comprising of cubicle panels; it did more to divert traffic, but it wasn't really an office. She sat behind the cubicle panels, and all that could be seen was her curly black hair. When Rachel walked into the Computer Lab, Miss French stood up, and she almost laughed at her nerdy glasses that were much bigger than her face. They almost looked like clown glasses, but they weren't.

"Candy, I thought I never told you to come back?" Miss French said. Her voice squeaking on every word. She walked from behind the cubicle panels, and she was nothing more than a twig of a person. She had her hands on her hips as if she was trying to make herself look bigger. "Just can't have you barging in here, and wrecking the place."

"Oh. Um. Don't you believe in forgiveness?" Rachel asked. She looked around the Computer Lab for a moment, and not a single student occupied the room. All the machines were turned off. "Why aren't these computers in use?"

Miss French laughed. "The operating system is too taxing on those old machines. They're too sluggish, and the state won't pay to upgrade them."

Rachel sat down in front of the first computer in the Computer Lab, and turned powered it on. The computer was at least four generations old with only two gigs of memory, hardly enough memory needed to run the latest Windows Operating System. Rachel reached into her jacket, and pulled out a USB drive, and shoved it into the rectangle slot on the front of the computer, typed in a few commands, and it immediately installed a powerful Linux Operating System.

"What are you doing?" Miss French asked.

"I'm installing another operating system on these machines," she said. It took approximately thirty minutes for the operating system to install, and then she said, "Turn on all the machines in the Computer Lab?"

Miss French walked around the Computer Lab, turned on all the machines, and watched them boot up. As soon as the computers booted, the Linux Operating System symbol displayed across all the monitors. Once they were all running, she installed video editing programs, word processing programs, and games on all the computers. She worked at an alarming speed, and Miss French was shocked by what she saw.

"How are you doing this?" Miss French asked. "The last I heard you were an illiterate."

Rachel didn't say a word. She continued to install software, and then gave Miss French the administrator password. "Kids can work on their assignments, build web pages, and do reports now."

"What's the speed like?" Miss French asked.

"A lot faster than before."

Miss French put up a sign that read, "Lab Open."

Rachel left out of the Computer Lab, and headed towards her third period class, and Mister Carter was sitting at his desk. She didn't know what to make of the thirty-something-year-old man as he sat in front of the classroom reading to the class. They were analyzing a Shakespearean play, and Rachel thought it was fascinating. The students listened to him closely, and James and Patty were sitting on the floor next to each other listening to him. They seemed to be the most attentive in the classroom, but the entire class appeared to be engaged. It was exciting.

The time seemed to go by swiftly, and at the end of the class, the instructor, said, "I'm going to need everybody's book reports by next Wednesday."

When all the students left out of the classroom for lunch, Rachel stayed behind. Mister Carter was erasing the chalkboard. She turned back into herself. The transformation didn't take long at all.

"I came here to kill you," Rachel said.

Mister Carter stopped erasing the board, and slowly turned to face her. His bottom lip trembled for a moment.

"I tried to do the right thing, Rachel," he said in a calm voice. He pulled up a chair, and sat down for a moment. "A night hasn't passed that I haven't thought about the contract killing of your father."

"Contract killing?" Rachel asked. She moved close to Mister Carter. "What do you mean contract killing?"

"A government official paid Officer David to carry out a hit on your father," he said with an unflinching face. "He was paid five million dollars to kill him."

"Who was the official?" She asked.

"I didn't meet her, but David said, 'She was the snake named Amanda.'" Mister Carter stood up, and asked, "Does that mean anything to you?"

Rachel stumbled backwards, and bumped against the desk. She shoved it across the room, and ran out of the classroom. She flew out of the building, and took flight like a Soviet missile. She screamed so loudly that it shook National City. She landed right in front of her apartment complex, and Ju sat outside on the steps. Rachel ran up to her, and said, "It was Amanda. It's always been Amanda."

"What, Rachel? What are you saying?" Ju asked.

Rachel covered her mouth as she cried. She whispered, "Amanda had my father killed."


	6. Chapter 6

Guardian Year One

Chapter Six

JJ, the young kid, and his best friend Patty walked back into their English class, and Mister Carter stood on a chair with a rope around his skinny neck. JJ shut the door behind him because he wanted to keep Mister Carter's setback private. When it came to Patty, She was far more than his mere friend, but they had been together almost their entire lives. He couldn't remember a time when she wasn't part of his life. They had a deep, unflinching love, and was often seen together throughout Little Africa. Even though her name was Patty Lee, he referred to her as Peppermint, and that was the name she went by all the time. He held Peppermint's hand as he watched his instructor inching closer to the edge of the chair.

When they saw Mister Carter with the rope around his neck, JJ knew something bad must have happened to him, but he didn't allude to it at all. He kissed Peppermint's right hand, and then said, "Can't let this fool hang himself."

"Do you have your blade?" She asked with a serious look.

"Always," he said with a straight face.

Mister Carter stood on the edge of the apricot chair as tears rolled helplessly down his face, and he edged closer and closer to kicking the chair from under him, and JJ knew it. He hopped on top of the desk directly in front of the instructor, and said, "Who's going to grade my book report if you do this?" Secretly, he pulled his sharp, well-made blade out of his pant's pocket, and continued to question Mister Carter's held his hands behind his beck, so his suicidal instructor couldn't see the knife, but he worked on keeping it sharp at least twice a week. He kept it so sharp that the reflection could cut paper.

"That's right," Peppermint said. She walked over to the other desk, on the other side of Mister Carter, and said, "You're leaving your sheep to the hands of wolves. Just a horrible idea." She had har black hair combed to one side, and it was long in the back. Her almond eyes were exotic, and her natural beauty didn't need a smidgen of makeup.

"Anybody this stupid to hang themselves in the middle of the day at school probably won't even die," he said. "You'd just end up dumber than a box of rocks."

"He'll probably just stroke out, and put his family in debt because he'll end up on government assistance," she said with a smirk. "He spends all this time talking about getting an education, so we won't be on public assistance, but if you leap off that chair, and don't die, you'll probably be confined to a bed."

"He's just weak, Peppermint," JJ said, "He's like the crumbs at the bottom of the popcorn bag. You can't really do anything with it except throw it in the trash."

Mister Carter tried stepping down from the chair, but it flew from underneath his clumsy feet, and his entire body tensed up. Peppermint leaped off hair chair, and tried to hold him up. He wobbled back and forth, and almost in a reflexive manner, but JJ cut the rope. It happened almost instantly when the chair flew backwards, Peppermint caught his legs, and then Mister Carter fell to the ground, forward on his knees, and threw up all over the floor.

"I'm not cleaning that up," Peppermint said. "Let's go, JJ. We don't need this disappointment in our lives."

"Get help, Mister Carter," JJ said, "You can do better."

"I don't know," Peppermint quipped. "I actually heard his IQ fall a few points when that chair fell backwards."

'Point taken," Mister Carter said.

"Well, then don't do that again," JJ said. "You're the only halfway decent teacher in the whole school."

James "JJ" Johnson and Peppermint walked home through the concrete jungles of Little Africa; it was a quiet walk, and they stopped at Martin Luther King Jr's Park about two blocks from their broken down apartment complex. They passed over some dried blood on the grass, and he knew Leroy Jenkins died in the very spot from a gunshot wound to the head. Cars drove by slow, and methodical looking for a drug buy. Many of times it was rich, white boys from National City looking for a quick hit, and JJ hated when they approached him or Peppermint. They sat on the Merry-Go-Round, ate a few peppermint balls, and talked about life in Little Africa. He looked over at his friend, and watched her stare intently at the ground.

"What's wrong?" He asked. Gently, he placed his hand on hers, and smiled. He had his left hand on one of the bars on the ride, and she sat right next to him. It was no secret that he loved her, and when it came to JJ and Peppermint, everybody knew of the nerd couple. "My little app only brings in about a thousand a month," he said softly. "It's not much, but if I make another app, it can bring in another thousand. At some point, we'll have enough money to find our own place."

She tried to smile, but it was forced. Instead, she cried a little. "What if we can't escape this place?" She asked softly. "It seems like it takes more than education to escape this place." She looked over at him, and then said, "Mister Vincent has a doctorate in biology, and he's the fry guy at Micky Mac's Burgers and Fries."

"Is the solution to our plight leaving this place?" He asked with a grimace. "We spend so much time talking about leaving, but I'm thinking we should stay, and make it better."

She smirked, and looked down at her hands. The wind blew lightly, and a cool breeze pushed through the area. "We take on a lot of big projects, but saving Little Africa is impossible with no help." She sighed. "Supergirl doesn't care. Superman could care less," she said with a grimace. "The local government doesn't do anything for us, JJ."

"If I say I want to stay in Little Africa for the good of the community, would you stay with me?" He asked.

"I don't want that, JJ," she said with tears rolling down her face. "Maybe it's our goals that will ruin our lifelong love affair."

"I don't need to go any farther than National City University for my education. There's no reason for me to leave the community, Peppermint. This place has a disease, and its children, the good ones, are the cure." He stood up, and folded his arms. He looked across the street, at the kids on the other side of the park. "I've thought about this long and hard," JJ said with a grimace. "But I know if you're not in this fight with me, I won't last long. I've never imagined you not being by my side, and I don't want to imagine it now."

She stood up, hugged him from behind, and said, "We don't make hasty decisions."

"That's true," he said as he placed his hands over hers. I know we're only sixteen, but I have to believe you'll stand with me the way our fathers stood together."

"It's not the same love," she said. "I don't think our fathers stood under the night sky making out to Tupac and Dido."

"That may be true, but they had each other's backs," he said, "That's for sure."

"Is my head not against your back right now?" She asked. "Does my heart no beat in sync with yours?"

"Yes," he said with a smile.

"Just give me time to ruminate, JJ," she said. "I just need some time, so any decision I make will be well thought out, and not done on a whim." Suddenly, he heard her stomach, growl.

"I was thinking about heading over to Mickey's for a burger, and fries," he said.

"You know I'm strapped for cash right now," she said with a smile.

"You know I'm not letting my one and only pay for anything," he said. "You've never paid and never will."

Micky Mac's Burgers and Fries…

The sign above the venerable restaurant was a picture of an obese, black man named Mickey with a plate of steaming burgers and fries. JJ and Peppermint always relaxed in the burger joint after school, and he'd pay for her dinner without question. Since the little app he made brought in some revenue, he spent a lot of it on Peppermint without asking for anything in return. More than a few times through the years, he had awakened in the middle of the night, ran across the hall, into her bedroom, and had to make sure she was okay. It started when they were much younger, right after the gang members shot JJ's father. In the middle of the night, he often raced across the hallway, opened the door, and ran to her bedroom just to check on her. On more than one occasion, he ran right past the Lees having sex on the couch, but he didn't flinch once. He hustled right to Peppermint's bedroom, checked to make sure she was okay, and then walked back in the living room, and said in a brittle voice. "She's okay. My baby is okay." Tears raced down his face, and Mrs. Lee placed on her robe, and hugged him.

Mister Lee, Peppermint's father, often kicked her into the hallway of the apartment if she scored badly on a test, and as soon as he did, JJ would build a blanket fortress, and spend the night with her in the hallway. JJ found out when the Lees wanted to have a night to themselves, they'd throw Peppermint into the hallway to keep him from finding a way into the house to check on her. It was just easier to put her into the hallway, and he'd stay with her, protect her, and pay attention to her. He always had Peppermint's back, and if anybody said anything negative to her, he immediately stepped in, and if fist flew, he'd often win because his father taught him how to fight before he died. Most people learned to leave JJ and Peppermint alone because of his fighting skills. It was one thing getting beat up at school, but it was much worse getting whooped by two bonafide nerds. There was something about them that made them strong, and every Saturday, they'd hang in his living room, practice dance moves off television, and push each other to be better. The previous year when they were Freshmen JJ took her to the prom, and he wore a black tuxedo. She had on a beautiful, white dress decorated with peppermints.

As soon as they entered into the prom, JJ bowed to his girlfriend, and asked, "Miss Peppermint, may I have this dance?"

She bent her knees, smiled, and then said, "Yes you may." He twirled her around in the middle of the dance floor, and it was bare; they were the only kids on the dance floor, and it was a fast pace song, but they danced like they were in a ballroom for about five minutes. The other students and faculty watched the odd couple, and thought they were insane, and from the outside looking at them, they were weird. In the previous year's yearbook, eight students were asked what did the perfect couple look like, and they all said, "JJ and Peppermint." Suddenly, they broke out into a dance called the Running Man, and they'd do four runs to the front, to the left, to the rear, then to the right, and then slide across the floor. The smooth motion and style had everybody crowding the floor to join them, and it was a small example of how their nerd power inspired all the kids in the school.

JJ and Peppermint sat in a booth, and Mickey set a large basket of fries, soda pop, and burgers in front of them, and he handed the burly man a twenty. Mickey then handed them two peppermint balls on the house, and it was like their dessert. When he grabbed a fry, he dipped it in the ketchup, and fed it to her, and she did the same for him. It was ritualistic of them to do so. It started when they were in the sixth grade that he fed her the first bite of the fries.

"That's two sticky-ickies on the house," Peppermint said.

"Can't beat that," JJ said.

During their eighth grade year of school, JJ came down with the flu, and he spent a week out of school. After the first day of bed rest, Peppermint took care of him the next four days, and refused to go to school after the first day without him. She said, "It was the loneliest day of my life." Her parents wanted to break them apart, but she was an average student in her early years, but after spending time with JJ, all they did was study. If she made a B on a test, her father would immediately ask what JJ made. It was always an A, so he automatically thought he was a good kid, and since Mister Lee and JJ's father served in the military together and were best friends, he decided to let them be. He told them if they married that he'd give her away without question.

"You two just won't do better than each other," Mister Lee said, "He thinks he's Vulcan and you think you're a piece of candy. There's not many dating options out there for you two. Should be glad you found each other."

"Thanks, Mister Lee," he said, "I think. Peppermint will always be my sticky-ickey"

He stuffed a few fries in his mouth, and then said, "After you went home last night, I think I saw the Guardian. He was by the old warehouse with all that electronic equipment on top."

"He had his motorcycle?" She asked. "I love that bike."

"Yeah." He sat back on the booth seat, watched her for a moment, and then said, "What's happening on that warehouse?" He grimaced, and shook his head in disbelief because he thought the government was doing another project on the black side of town. "I don't trust it."

"JJ, don't you go messin' around," Peppermint snapped. She gave him a long stare, and then quipped, "You're gonna get yourself killed."

He sighed. "I'm not going to do anything."

She grabbed him by his right hand, and said, "Promise, JJ? Promise you're not going to do anything stupid?"

Later in the evening….

JJ sat on the curb outside his apartment complex, and Peppermint went upstairs to watch television, but he knew she kept spying on him out the window because the warehouse with all the fancy equipment was next to their dilapidated apartment complex. He looked up at her living room window from the curb, and he didn't see her at first; but then all of a sudden, the curtain flew back, and she pointed at him with an angry look that tacitly suggested, "You better not go messin' around at that warehouse." He gave her a light wave, and she quickly closed the curtains, and then he could hear her rumbling down the stairs, out the apartment front door, and down the sidewalk. She sat down beside her boyfriend, and watched him closely for a moment. "If you go over there, then I'm coming."

"You don't need to come," he said, "I don't want you getting in trouble."

"Then you better not go either," she said.

The Next Day…

JJ and Peppermint sat next to each other in History class, and he made note of Candy's empty seat. He immediately scooted Peppermint's desk right next to his, and she sat down, opened her history book, and he did the same. The class sat quietly, and nobody wanted to talk too loudly because they feared Candy would show up in a learning mood, and start whooping on Big Frank like she did the previous day. The calmness felt eerie; it was crazy that nobody screamed bitch or nigga or something that an outsider would find offensive. JJ pulled out a peppermint ball, slid it over to his girlfriend, and she grabbed it quickly, stuck it in her mouth, and started sucking it loudly.

Big Frank walked into the classroom, bruised and battered from the previous day. Black eye, busted lip, and face abrasions, and with all the inflictions, he continued to show his face, even though a girl beat him up. Most of the student body feared him because of his size and dexterity. He played football, wrestled, and dominated the basketball court. The only player who out performed him on the court was Johnny "Stretch" Johnson, JJ's first cousin. When Johnny walked into the classroom, it meant Miss Nater wasn't far behind. Everybody-meaning the student body-suspected they had an illicit relationship, but nobody said anything about it. But from what JJ could tell, it was more than a few casual trysts under the bleachers because he could feel it. The way he looked at Miss Nater was the way JJ looked at Peppermint, and with all his heart, he loved Peppermint.

When the instructor walked into the classroom, she looked disheveled to a certain degree. Her crimson hair always had a rumpled look as if somebody had ran their fingers through it while in a passionate embrace. She looked like she made a last ditch effort to tuck in her blouse, and her shirt was off by one button. She walked rapidly, but when she saw Candy's empty chair, she paused, but continued to set up the overhead projector, and start with her lesson plan. It was odd. It was weird, and everything happened quickly.

Peppermint sucked on her candy ball. JJ held her hand. Johnny sat quietly with a look of gleeful shame on his face. Miss Nater prepared to teach. Big Frank seethe in anger. Mike tapped his pen on the desk. It was loud but quiet. Nikki said, "Ahem." Lucy popped her knuckles on the desk. Miss Nater placed the first slide on the projector. JJ smiled at Peppermint. Johnny gave Miss Nater a look. Big Frank flew into a rage, and knocked Miss Nater across the room. It happened fast. It took everybody a few seconds to process it.

"What did you do?" Johnny asked loudly. Big Frank was in a fighting stance, and Johnny hit him hard, and knocked him backwards.

JJ flew out of his seat, and screamed, "Go high!" He hit Big Frank in the growing, and then Johnny punched him in the nose. Peppermint leaped over Johnny, and kicked Big Frank in the face, and he fell backwards.

Peppermint ran over to Miss Nater, and screamed, "JJ, call nine-one-one. She's not breathing."

"Start CPR," he said. He called nine-one-one immediately, and they said the buss was on its way. He ran over to his girlfriend, and both of them continued with the CPR. Johnny was in the background screaming and crying.

He paced back and forth, and then said, "Save her, man. She's all I got."

"We got this, Johnny," Jimmy said as he continued to give her chest compressions.

"Mike, take Johnny out the class," Peppermint said, "Do it!"

JJ, Peppermint, and Johnny were at the hospital in the waiting room, and he tried his best to console his cousin. It was late, about nine o'clock in the evening, and Peppermint fell asleep at his feet. He sat down in the floor, so she could place her head on his thigh. They often slept like that when her father banished her to the hallway for making less than stellar grades. He kept in constant contact with Misses Lee to the whereabouts of her daughter, and the situation that happened at school. In addition, he begged Johnny to quit saying Miss Nater was his everything, because if she survived, she'd have to face a jury. He looked over at a young doctor in a white coat, short, and who didn't seem any older than him. Quickly, he realized she worked on top the warehouse with all the special equipment. She went into Miss Nater's room for about ten minutes, and then came out with a smile on her face. When he opened the door to the room, he saw Miss Nater sitting on the bed, watching television, and eating some candy.

"Johnny, she's awake," he said.

Johnny ran over to the door, shoved JJ out the way, and hugged and kissed her intensely.

"You two, calm down," JJ said, "Be discreet. I have to get Peppermint home. Do you two need anything?"

"I have everything I need right here," Johnny said. He kissed Miss Nater on the forehead.

It was way after dark, and minutes past curfew when JJ arrived home with Peppermint, and he knew what to expect. As soon as they walked up to the fourth floor, her father stepped out with her pillow, blanket, and attitude, and then dropped it all in front of her feet. He quickly went into the house, and slammed the door. Frustrated, he sat on the ground with his girlfriend, and tried to think where he went wrong because he kept in constant contact with her mother. He never lied to her. He wasn't being deceptive, but they still punished his beloved, and he hated it.

"I'm building a blanket fortress," he said cheerfully. Quickly, he ran into the house, grabbed all his blankets, some chairs, and then went to build their fortress. It only took him about ten minutes, and he had it set up perfectly. Peppermint had already fallen asleep next to the door, and then he gently picked her up off the ground, placed her in the fortress, and then covered her up with the blankets. He kissed her on the forehead, and said softly, "I love you, Peppermint Patty Lee."

National City: Earlier that day…

Rachel sat up in her bed when the cops came into her home, ransacked the place, and then left quickly. She sat directly in front of them, but used her powers to cloak herself. She quickly realized they had an order to shoot her on sight, and she didn't really care. Parts of her memory were missing, but she had a running log on her Tablet PC of important events, and she wrote down that Ju Gee was a powerful telepath with the ability to erase her memory. It was on her mind constantly, and now with that bit of information, she knew why her best friend had bad nosebleeds. Every day, she felt her strength and power growing, and the stronger she became, the harder job Ju had in suppressing her memories.

When she walked into the living room, she watched her roommate nurse her fiery nosebleed. Her blood drenched her entire shirt, and she looked wobbly.

"You're playing a dangerous game," Rachel said with a grimace. She walked over to her roommate, and asked, "How long have you been suppressing my memories?" Ju didn't say anything at all as she continued to baby her nose. "I thought you were my friend."

"You don't have any friends, Rachel," Ju said. Blood dripped on her shirt, on her legs, and on everything. "Amanda hired me to watch you."

Rachel folded her arms, sat on the floor, and ruminated for a long moment. She looked up at her roommate, and asked, "How can you live with yourself?"

"You're my job," she said with a smirk on her face. "When I'm done with this job, I'll be on a new one."

The young woman sniffled, and looked down at the ground for a moment, and she used her gifts to enter into Ju's mind to see what she knew. She wasn't as eloquent as her roommate, and she tore through her mind like an oversized truck, and Ju screamed in agony. When she severed the link between her and her roommate, Ju flopped wildly on the floor, and blood flew into the air. She tried to be calm, walked out of the apartment, but she turned around, and threw her across the room with her telekinesis. The older, Asian woman screamed loudly, but Rachel continued to slam her to the ground.

She walked out of the building, flew into the air, and then landed in Little Africa in the middle of the morning. Angered, she walked up to a small, white house on the North Side of Little Africa. There was an unmarked police car in front of it, and a few lookouts lurking around the neighborhood. Officer Carter knew he was in trouble because when she walked up to the house, three large black men ran over to her.

"Will you die for him?" She asked calmly.

They laughed, and she detected the largest guy had a heart defect. "You need to leave," he said.

Rachel crept into his mind, and found out his name was Michael, and then she said, "You have a heart defect, Michael."

"How do you know that?" He asked.

She walked up to him, and said, "I beg you to leave, brother. The man you're protecting killed my father, and now death has come for him."

"Shoot this, bitch," one of the other guys said. When the third guy pulled out his weapon, he shot the guy in the head who said shoot this bitch. He then pointed the weapon at his own head.

"Michael, if a man ordered your death, what would you do?"

"How are you doing this?" He asked.

"Answer my question, Michael," she said. "You're willing to die for the man who killed my father." She grimaced for a second, and then said, "Watch what I can do." Suddenly the guy with the gun to his head's left arm dropped to the ground, and there wasn't any blood. Michael screamed loudly, and fell backwards onto the street. Next, his right arm fell to the ground, and he screamed at the top of his lunges, and the large guy on the ground looked terrified at what he had seen. "I just wanted you to leave, Michael. You would attack your own kind for a murdering cop." Lastly, the man's entire body split completely in half, and he died. She heard a rifle cock, and the sniper flew off the roof, landed in the middle of the street, and a large truck ran over him. When she pointed to Michael, she placed him two miles down the street, and then said to him telepathically, "Go home."

She placed her hands in front of the quaint little house, and ripped it apart one board at a time. It sounded like trees snapping during a strong wind. Once she finished with ripping the sides off the house, the cop and several prostitutes laid in his bedroom. He tried to grab his weapon, and as soon as he picked it up, his heart flew out of his mouth, onto the bed, and the women screamed loudly. When her energy subsided, the entire house collapsed, and it killed all the prostitutes on the inside of it.

Without warning, Rachel fell to the ground in agony, and then Amanda Waller walked from behind the apartment building across the way. Rachel didn't realize her mind was so powerful, and she tried to fight her, but Amanda had mastered the skill of mind manipulation. Rachel ripped a tree out of the ground, and hurled it at Amanda, but she blocked it.

"Your strength amazes me," Amanda said with a grimace. "Your strength no way compares to mine though."

"You're not as strong as you think," she said.

"I'm an immortal clone," she said, "I've killed gods and guardians for the Great Mother."

Rachel grabbed all the energy she could from the Earth, and a powerful beam came out of her fist, and knocked her backwards, into the wall of the small, corner church. She then picked her up, and tossed her into the air, and let her body fall haphazardly to the floor. Amanda leaped to her feet, and smacked the young teenager in the face, and she flew into the hard ground. Rachel then took off into the sky, and flew over to the warehouse. When she walked over to her machine, she wanted to dismantle it. Nervous, she pulled out her phone, and quickly entered the events that took place in the cloud, and then she heard some foot prints coming up the stairwell. When she looked around the corner, Ju stood directly in front of her with a bruised face. It happened so quickly when her roommate grabbed her head, hugged her, and then she completely forgot everything that happened the entire day. She fell to the ground, looked up at the night sky, and tried to remember how she made it to the roof of the warehouse. Rachel sat up, and said, "Soon, my baby will be operational."

"It's going to make a big difference," Ju said. "It will change this entire community."

In the background, an ambulance siren went off, and Rachel noticed that it headed for the school. She looked at the time, and realized that it was Miss Nater's class time, and she had made monumental changes that upset Big Frank, the school bully. Taking flight, she flew into the air, and hovered over the school, and waited, watched, and noticed a small crowd around the entrance. They took Miss Nater out of the school on a stretcher, and she watched Johnny crying and screaming while they put her in the van. Rachel flew over to the hospital, sat on a park bench across from the medical facility, and watched for a moment. Only an hour had passed, and at least twenty emergencies happened within that time, but she was only there for Miss Nater. She felt badly because she knew her interference from a day earlier might have caused the violence, but she abhorred willful ignorance, and tried to challenge it at every turn.

Later in the evening…

It was a busy evening at the hospital, and as soon as she walked into the waiting area, she saw JJ watching television while his girlfriend had her head on his lap. She was asleep. Johnny paced the floor, and he looked more stress than any mere student should have for their teacher. Rachel pulled out her cellphone, and the back of it had a small vile of liquid placed in the compartment with the battery. She walked into Miss Nater's hospital room, and her entire head looked twice the natural size. The brute, Big Frank beat her badly, and it was a sad picture to say the least. She was a unique instructor, the kind of instructor with potential. She sat on the bed next to her, and she looked almost dead. A good science wouldn't inject an experimental drug into patients, but with the particle generation on top of the warehouse, in a few days Little Africa would become metahuman central.

Rachel quickly administered the powerful, mutagenic drug to Miss Nater, and it changed her on a molecular level. First, she grew in size, and her hair grew long, redder, and thicker. Every blemish on her face and body disappeared. Her legs became muscular and her abs were now visible. The formula worked; it enhanced the damaged instructor, and then she opened her eyes. Quickly, the young scientist left her room, passed the loving couple, and then out the side door.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

James sat in his massive apartment, and right before he fell asleep, he heard a rap on the door. He looked at the time on his watch that he laid on the nightstand, and walked over to the door. His body was long, muscular, and ready for combat, but when he opened the door, he didn't immediately see anybody. Suddenly he realized that his feet weren't touching the ground, and when he looked down, he saw Rachel. She lifted him off the ground with the power of her mind, and placed him gently on his bed. She glided over to the chair right next to James' bed, and spoke softly.

"I have a problem," she said peacefully.

"You're darn right," he said, "You killed cops, Rachel."

She grimaced. "You say that because you think a badge makes a cop," she said with a smirk. Pacing in front of him, she then said, "They were assassins." Tired, she walked over to James, and said, "The same person behind the death of my father killed your father."

"Wait? What?" James asked with a grimace. Flummoxed, he stood to his feet, and then she waved her hand, and he flew back onto the bed.

"Just listen," she demanded with anger in her voice. "I have no friends. Not one. Not even Ju. She works directly for Amanda."

"Amanda?" James asked.

"Waller," she said with a stern look. "She's not who she appears to be." James placed his head in his hands, and then she said, "She's over a million years old."

James started laughing. "That's crazy." He immediately noticed that the young woman didn't flinch or smirk or do anything to indicate she was joking or crazy.

"You've heard the term meta-human?" Rachel asked.

"Yeah. People with extraordinary abilities like Supergirl," he said.

"No. She's Kryptonian. An alien like Amanda," she said, "Ju is a metahuman. She's a human with attributes. She's a powerful telepathic human."

"What about you?" James asked.

She pulled out her phone, and looked through her notes. "Ju erases my memory, but when I'm out of her reach, my memory returns." She thumbed through her notes, and said, "I'm an entity built in the matrix of the universe."

"What does that mean?" James asked.

"The universe has a grand design," Rachel said.

"You mean by God," James said.

"Not in the way you think," she said with a smile. "The Great Mother who we know as Amanda and her team of scientist designed this universe, and placed a council of supreme beings to guide the universe in a wise direction. Our Amanda is a clone of the Great Mother. The beings were designed into the matrix of the planet."

"What does that mean?" James asked.

"It means if they die, the matrix reproduces them. Otherwise, they're immortal."

"What is your place in the matrix?" He asked with a smile.

"I see your doubts, but I'm the harbinger of the Destroyer," she said. "My powers don't come close to his."

"Who's the Destroyer?" He asked.

"The Great Mother told me every design has its strengths and weaknesses," she said. "Some of the players are flawed. When the Destroyer comes, he will eliminate the flawed design," she said, "But from what I can tell, he has a major flaw."

"What's his flaw?" James asked.

"His need for love," she said. "But he's not looking for just any love. He wants a girl that resembles the Great Mother and his sister who's part of the matrix. If he doesn't find her, he'll find her doppelganger. Together, they'll set a new path for the entire universe."

"But have you verified all this?" James asked.

Rachel smirked. "You've heard of the Destroyer," she said, "He's part of myth and folklore. You know him as Lucifer."

James laughed. "The Devil."

"We may or may not know when the Destroyer arrives," she said, "But when Su'Ri Sayd is born that will be the sign to the Guardians, and they'll send the Lanterns to find him."

"Why are they involved?" He asked.

"'Cause the Destroyer is coming for the Guardians," she said. "If he chooses to kill the Guardians, they will be out of existence for two thousand years."

"What's with the metahumans?" James asked.

"The human race is weak," she said. "Cruel and pedestrian. In a few days, Amanda will change the residents of Little Africa on a molecular level. She's giving them a metahuman upgrade. The grandchild of somebody from Little Africa will produce a daughter who Amanda will commandeer, and will change her body to handle the coming of the Destroyer."

"Superman or Supergirl can stop him," James said.

"Not really," she said with a grimace. "Please understand the Destroyer is of the gods. Amanda used me to build the goo needed to bring him to fruition. We're trying to ensure he's born on Earth."

"How do you stop him?" James asked.

"You don't," she said. "He's coming within twenty-five years regardless of what we do. But in a few days, life will change for everybody in National City. Amanda calls it 'Nigga Night.'"

"Well, that's kind of offensive," James aid.

"Ten percent of Little Africa's residents will be imbued with great powers," she said, "Some of them will be as strong as Superman, but all will be enhanced to some degree."

"Why are you telling me all this?" He asked.

"I need you to distract Ju," she said, "She's growing weaker as I grow stronger, but she's been able to derail my attempts to take the Particle Accelerator offline."

"Can you kill her?" James asked.

"She's just a clone," she said, "The Great Mother is in a region of space called Chthonic, and it's over ten thousand light years from here."

Next day at school…

JJ and Peppermint walked through the hallway, and he carried her books. It was about twenty minutes before class started, and the cute couple sat outside of Miss Nater's class. Quickly, he reached into his backpack, pulled out a peppermint ball, and popped it in Peppermint's mouth. He turned his back to her, and then sat her back up against his while she surfed World Stop.

"You know I kept in constant contact with your momma last night," he said with a grimace. "Your pops still made you sleep in the hallway."

"I'm good, baby," she said, "I awoke in your arms, so it's all good."

He saw Miss Nater walk past, and gave a soft stare at Johnny who stood at his locker. Frustrated, JJ shook his head in disbelief at their display of affection. She wore her spring dress that gently covered her curves, and it looked accidentally provocative. It was all for Johnny: the hair and the dress-and even the alluring stare. It was obvious, and JJ hated it because people talked. If he saw the small gestures then that meant other people saw it too.

Tommy Tater, a dark skinned friend, ran up to him with his girlfriend, Becky Love, and said, "JJ, you're upsetting us guys." He talked fast, and his voice was adenoidal. Short hair, light mustache, and wearing a striped shirt, he smiled bigly.

Peppermint laughed, and said, "Don't blame my man for your lack of romance."

"How do you do it, JJ?" Tommy asked. "Effortlessly, you give your girl the world."

"Be like JJ, Tommy," Becky said. "You are what you are."

JJ handed his girlfriend all the books, nodded to her, and then she hopped to her feet, and headed to the classroom. Becky followed behind her, and talked about girl stuff. He placed his hands on Tommy's left shoulder, and said, "There might be some undercovers on campus. Don't say anything about Miss Nater and Johnny. Just play it dumb."

"Oh, snap!" Tommy exclaimed. "They know?"

"Maybe," he said with a grimace. "Just be normal."

"I saw her a minute ago giving him that look," he said with a look of excitement. "I tell you this much: she's been working out. She's toned."

Suddenly, JJ felt a strong push from behind, and he slid to the floor, smacked his head, and laid down face first for a moment. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, and Peppermint screamed as loud as possible, and attacked Big Frank from behind, and then he picked her up off his back, and tried to throw her, but she held on to him, and wouldn't let go. Tommy tried to swing on the big guy, but he smacked him into the wall, and then JJ ran over to him, kicked him in the growing, and grabbed his girlfriend. Everything happened so quickly, and Jimmy made sure Peppermint wasn't hurt.

"I'm okay," she said.

When Miss Nater walked around the corner, and with Johnny close behind her, she hit Big Frank, and his neck snapped like a twig. He collapsed on the ground, and the cherry haired instructor jumped on top of his corpse, and beat him into mush. All the students ran out the building as she tore his body into pieces, and JJ hadn't ever seen anything like it in his life.

"Miss Nater, what did you do?" JJ asked. She stood over the bloody corpse, and the entire hallway emptied as she tore into the student who put her in the hospital. Johnny stood off to the side with his hands on his head, and he was in a state of shock. When she stood up, she looked down at her blood hands, and shook her head in disbelief.

"What did I do?" She asked.

JJ and Peppermint grabbed their books, headed out the school, down the hill, and walked back home. His mother was on her way out the door for work, and he explained to her the incident at school. He slid the coffee table out of the way, placed some blankets on the ground, lay next to Peppermint, and talked. His phone beeped, and when he checked the text, it was Johnny. The message read, "Turn on the television." Quickly, he clicked the on button on the remote, and it was Miss Nater running through the streets with the cops chasing her. She ran through Martin Luther King Jr. Park when a cop tried to hit her with the taser, but she circumvented the shot with animalistic dexterity.

"She's not human," Peppermint said in amazement.

Miss Nater flipped over the cop's head, and then attacked him in like a feral cat, and tore through his flesh. His head rolled to the ground, and then he fell on his back. "They're going to kill her now."

Peppermint's phone beeped, and then she said, "I just told momma that we left school when things went crazy."

Suddenly a series of gun fire could be heard outside the apartment complex, and he ran over to the window. When Peppermint ran over to him, he said, "Let's head to the backroom."

"What's going on?" She asked.

"Miss Nater just ran past the apartment complex."

After the raucous passed the apartment complex, the news crews were still in the area, and discussing the carnage at the school. Miss Nater killed Big Frank, Principal Strong, Assistant Principal Black, and Taylor Lacky, the janitor. Tommy Tater texted JJ like he had lost his mind, and informed him of all the carnage. The idea that Miss Nater killed so many people in the school felt surreal to him. Peppermint lay on the floor with her bare feet on the bed, and listened to her head phones. He crawled over to her, and kissed her on the lips, and then laid down beside her. He reached underneath his bed, grabbed a white shoebox full of peppermint balls, grabbed one, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth.

"Thank you, sir," she said with a huge smile.

Suddenly, he heard a loud thump outside the front door, and the two teens hopped up, and ran to the living room. The television was on in the background, but the volume was set low. When they heard the knock, JJ peeped through the hole in the door, and said, "Johnny. Hold on a sec?" He quickly opened the door, pulled in his cousin, and then shut the door behind him. He looked abused: hair disheveled, face bruised, pants tattered, shirt ripped, and face battered.

"She killed them," Johnny said in a brittle voice. "Every last one of them."

"I heard," JJ said with a somber look on his face. Peppermint sat on the couch, and sucked on her candy, and then walked over to her boyfriend, kissed him on the cheek, and then held his hand.

"No. She killed over eight cops a few minutes ago," he said in a whisper. He paced back and forth in the livingroom, and then he said, "Her strength is inhuman."

"Why did she do that?" Peppermint asked.

"The cops attacked me as I tried to reach her," he said in a soft whisper. "They pounded my face into the ground like I killed people." His breathy voice demonstrated the pain in his heart. "I was ready to die, but out of nowhere Karen tore into those cops. They didn't have time to draw their weapons before she ripped them into pieces." He paused for a moment, and then said, "I looked up at her. She was feral. She was like a wild beast, but when I looked into her eyes, JJ, I saw her. It was her."

"This is out of your control, Johnny," JJ said. "You can't afford to get involved with this madness."

"I have to do something," he said lamentingly. "I love her."

"What can you do?" Peppermint asked. "You're marching into a world of madness."

"Patty, she's my nirvana," he said, "You two know what I'm saying because you two have it. You two find solace in each other. JJ, if something happened to Patty..."

"You know I'd move heaven and earth for her," he said with a grimace. He ran over to the hallway closet, pulled out a gun, and chambered a round.

"What are you doing?" Peppermint asked angrily.

"It's for Johnny," he said in a strong voice. "He must protect himself."

"JJ," he said in a disagreeable voice. "Put it away."

"But you need some protection," he said. His countenance changed to one of dismay.

"I have protection," he snapped.

"What? Your heart?" JJ asked with a smirk.

"Exactly," he said.

"Oh. OH!" JJ exclaimed.

"Part of me thinks you're going to die," Peppermint said.

Jimmy walked over to his cousin, and hugged him. "Please don't go out there."

"I have to take control of this situation, JJ," he said. "I love her."

Johnny ran out the front door, down the stairs, and out the apartment complex. Dead cops littered the street, and several of the locals had stolen their guns and uniforms. It was strange seeing naked bodies thrown all over the neighborhood, and in some ways, it made him extremely nervous. He saw what Karen could do, and it bothered him, but he trusted her to a certain degree. He didn't know what to make of the recent changes to her body. She had told him a day prior that she was three months pregnant, and he felt happy about that, but now with the changes, he didn't know the viability of the fetus. He heard the ambulance sirens blaring through the neighborhood, and a police helicopter thumped overhead. He felt tristful, but he had to find his love before the cops found her. In addition, with the amount of carnage in Little Africa, he believed Supergirl would show up at anytime, but then again, she never came to the black side of National City.

He looked around in the business area of Little Africa to make sure nobody watched him as he climbed down into the raunchy sewers. He showed Karen where he played as a child, and whenever he needed a place to think, he had a special corner in the sewers. He ran through the murky underground, to the very back, and saw his beloved squatted in the corner. Her hair was wild, and she seemed to talk to herself, and when she sniffed the air, she said in a raspy voice, "Leave me be, Johnny.'

He cried a little as he watched his beloved squatted in the corner of the room with tears streaming down her face. She looked strong, mutated, and wild. Nervous, he searched his heart to find the right words needed for the traumatic moment, but he couldn't think of anything. When he approached her, she hissed at him. Pausing, he sat on the ground in front of her, but out of the reach of her arms. "You look so tired, baby," he said.

She hid her face from him, and said, "Don't look at me." Ducking her head, he could barely see her face, and then she turned her head toward the corner of the wall. He hadn't ever seen his beloved in such a condition.

He paused for a moment, and then smiled. "Karen, I love you regardless of your looks. Please don't cover up your face?" She slowly uncovered her face, and her protruding forehead caught him off guard, but she still had the sparkle that he liked. "I don't know what's happening, but we have to leave National City."

In a deep, somewhat masculine voice, she replied, "You can't come with me, Johnny." She faced him with her whole face, and he wanted to die at the mere thought of not having her.

"But the baby," he said with a grimace. "You're carrying my child."

She placed her hands on her stomach, and then said, "Once the baby is born, I will find a way for you to see her."

"No, Karen," he said. "We'll do this together."

"No. Johnny," she said, "I killed those cops so you may live. You need to stay safe. Maybe you'll find a good girl."

"You're my girl. You're the best girl, and I don't need to look any further," he said. He reached out his long right arm, touched her face, and said, "I love you, Karen." She was like a wild animal, and he instinctively watched every move around her.

Suddenly, Karen jumped to her feet, and said, "Listen?"

"What?" He asked as his heart raced. Her tattered dressed barely covered her strong frame, and he felt the need to abscond with her.

"Footsteps," she said. She walked over to Johnny, kissed him, and then a voice rang out.

"There'll be enough of that," the black lady said with the short fro, and wearing a military uniform. "It's time to go, Karen."

Karen kissed Johnny long and hard, and then she walked over to the woman. She looked back at Johnny, and said, "This is the right thing."

"Who are you?" Johnny asked. "What's happening."

"Go home, kid," she said. "In a few days, Little Africa will change forever."

When he tried to walk towards his girlfriend, his body froze in place. He couldn't move no matter how hard he tried.

"Johnny!" Karen exclaimed.

"He's okay," the woman said. "He'll unfreeze when we leave."

Back at JJ's...

Johnny walked into the house, walked over to the sink, and drank a glass of water. JJ walked over to him, and asked, "What happened?"

"I don't know," he said, "Some woman showed up, and took Karen. She looked military," he said sobbingly. "She said something big is coming to Little Africa."

"Oh, school's out for the rest of the week," JJ said. "I'm sad because Peppermint will be out of town with her parents."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Peppermint sat at the breakfast table with a plate of fried eggs, two sausages, pancakes, and syrup. She stayed up most of the night in a daze, terribly unsettled. A cup full of orange juice set on the side of her plate, and she ate slowly because of a small spat between her and Jimmy. Her father sat on the other side of the table, and gobbled down his breakfast quickly, but she waited for Jimmy to come crashing through the front door like he did most mornings. She looked over at the front door, and wondered what was taking him so long, and it worried her. She picked at her food.

She felt like her father kept staring at her, but she didn't want to confront him because he had complained about her repeatedly missing curfew. With JJ upset over his man business, her father constantly complaining, and her mother always siding with everybody else, she felt alone. She felt an emptiness that she didn't like. Her mother served breakfast, and she was a petite woman approximately five foot three with black hair. She hated her looks, the shape of her eyes, and she often expressed her dismay out loud. Peppermint never understood why her mother felt the way she did, and didn't want to ask her about it.

It wasn't odd that Miss Lee wore makeup so early in the morning, and she had her hair in a bun. She wore black glasses that fit her face perfectly, but she had eye surgery to give her a European visage, and Peppermint hated that.

"These late nights with JJ has to stop," her father said as he looked over his newspaper. She continued to eat her eggs, and didn't think it would be in her best interest to answer without thinking it through. "You're sixteen. I like JJ, but he's not an Asian boy."

Peppermint looked up from her plate with anger in her heart, and asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Ahem." He cleared his throat, and then said, "Just what it means. Yes. JJ is smart, but he's black. What's the likelihood he'll make it out of this trash town?"

"The reason you want to leave Little Africa is because you're weak," she said with conviction. "You listen to those crackers across the tracks, and now they got you believing tucking your tail and running is the way to build a strong community."

"What do you know?" He asked.

"JJ and I spend all day, everyday studying, reading, and learning, and what we know is to build a strong city, you have to put in the effort," she said, "You don't run from the problems of your community. You stay and fight."

"Lower that tone, Patty," her mother said with a grimace.

"You can do whatever you choose to do, but don't ever belittle JJ in my presence," she said with a grimace.

"So, it's like that?" Mister Lee asked.

"Yes," she said.

"You know what? Keep your ass here," he said with a grimace.

"What? You're leaving me behind?" She asked with a scowl on her face. "This isn't fair!" At this point, Peppermint feigned anger in the hopes they'd leave her behind because she wanted to stay with JJ. She wanted to put on a show like they wronged her.

Mister Lee wrote on a piece of paper, and then passed it to her. It read, "Quit faking. We know you wanted to stay." He smiled. "Promise me that you'll be safe."

"Of course, father," she said, "JJ and I protect each other."

Mrs. Lee made another plate of food, set it on the table, and then JJ walked into the apartment, sat down, and started eating. "Dad's letting me stay." She placed her hand on top of his to see if he had calmed down from their small spat. They had spent the entire night discussing his diminutive penis size, but it was based on a misunderstanding of what size a penis was supposed to be.

"This means no silliness, JJ,' he said, "I'm trusting you to take care of my girl."

"We'll play it safe," he said. "I promise you."

JJ ate his food quietly, and Peppermint felt pretty good on the inside because her father wasn't obdurate on the Asian boy issue. He always stated that JJ was a good kid, and if she married interracially then he was the best choice. Her love for him went back so long that she couldn't remember a time when she didn't love him. If anything, her unyielding love stood many test, and she expected more hurdles in the future. The unknown didn't scare her, but a life without him would be a horrible life indeed she thought.

"That sausage is really good. It's like your mom's," Peppermint said.

"It has the same texture and everything," JJ said.

"She gave me the receipe," Mrs. Lee said.

Later in the morning...

At first, the neighborhood looked like any inner city neighborhood, and Peppermint felt good she didn't see any dead bodies in the street. She sat on the front steps of her apartment complex, looked up and down the street, and didn't see anything similar to what the news media saw. She waited for JJ to finish dressing, and she went outside for some fresh air, and to give the area a quick glance over. Later in the morning, the city planned on holding a memorial ceremony for the people killed over at the school. They planned on going after a visit to the local sex shop.

The previous night after Johnny left, JJ and her petted in his room with the door locked, and while his mother slept in the next room over. It went on for awhile with loud panting and a lot of aggressive grinding, but JJ kept it nonsexual until he had some good, reliable protection. For some reason, she had a mad idea to measure his penis after she heard some guys brag about their twelve-inch ones during Study Hall. She had heard several students-black and-white state loudly they carried twelve-inch pensises, and that was a problem for JJ. She measured his penis, and it was only eight inches during their petting session, and after measuring it the fourth time, it came out to eight in a half inches. It was fully erected the entire time until the last measurement, and he lost complete interest in everything. His diminutive size frustrated him because he thought if the other guys in school had a twelve inch pensis, then he could never satisfy her. Both of them were virgins, and hadn't engaged in anything close to sex with another human being, and because of the inadequacy of their school's education system, they never had classes on sex education.

She knew he wanted to engage in coitus as soon as her parents left out of town, and his intentions screamed from his eyes, but he worried because of his inadequate manhood. They both thought a twelve inche pensis was the norm, and it gave both of them great anxiety, but for different reasons. She wasn't so much worried about his pensis size, but about his feelings toward her and the relationship. After the fourth time she measured him, his voice became brittle, and he even said, "Well, if you want a twelve-incher."

"I never said that," she snapped. She felt a lump in her throat because he became short with her, and he never did that. Ever. The atmosphere of the room changed, and she wanted to return to the time before she measured his manhood. She didn't have any idea that so much of his confidence relied on the size of his manhood.

"I don't feel inadequate," he said with a grimace. "Maybe you didn't measure it right."

"I've done it four times, and it's eight inches," she said, "I don't care about the size."

"Just go home," he said said, "I need some time to think."

"JJ. You're being silly," she said with tears in her eyes. "You've never kicked me out for any reason."

"Patty, please," he said. "I just need time to think. Can't I think."

"You never call me Patty, JJ," she said, "I don't care that you're eight inches. It doesn't matter to me."

Peppermint, frustrated about the previous night, ran into the apartment complex, up the stairs, and into her apartment. Her father left work, and her Momma sat on the couch watching the news. She drank some coffee, crossed her legs, and listened about the fugitive teacher who killed the students, other teachers, and cops the previous night. She had her legs crossed, and bounced her left foot as she seemed agitated about the events of the previous day.

"Momma, I need to talk," she said with a grimace.

"About what?" She asked.

"Jimmy," she said, "He's feeling inadequate because a couple of guys claim to have twelve inch pensises, but I meausred his, and it isn't anywhere near that."

She laughed for a moment, and then said, "I thought you two had already had sex."

Befuddled, she shook her head in the negative, and then said, "Not yet. He wanted to last night until I measured his length." She paused for a moment. "He's so much smaller than all the other guys."

"Listen, Patty," her Momma said, "None of those boys have twelve inch pensises. I can promise you that. The average pensis size is between five and six inches."

Peppermint looked at her Momma for a moment with her surgically altered eyes, and sighed. "Why would they lie?"

"For bragging rights," she said, "If a man is six inches, he's a good, healthy size." She took a sip of her coffee, and laid back on the couch to watch the news. "It's horrible what that teacher did. They still haven't found her."

"This penis size stuff has me nervous, Momma," she said.

"Well. If he's bigger than three inches, he'll be okay," she said. "I just want you to be safe, have him wear protection, and remain in a committed relationship."

"Well, I have to go tell JJ eight inches is more than enough."

Her Momma hopped to her feet, and said, "He's eight inches?"

"No. Eight and a half inches, she said.

"He has a WVD," she snapped.

"What's that?" She asked.

"A weapon of vaginal destruction," she said.

When she walked out of her apartment, JJ stepped outside of his, and they walked down stairs together holding hands. "I talked to Momma about your size."

"Don't go telling everybody," he said, "Now everybody knows I'm inadequate."

"You're not," she said. "Momma said five to six inches was average, and twelve inches was unheard of. When I told her you had eight inches, she nearly leaped off the sofa."

They walked down the street, over to Martin Luther King street, and into a sex shop called Nancy's Play Things. They passed by the sex shop all the time, but never went inside. It had an assortment of sex dolls, dildos, rows of condoms, and plenty of lubricants. In addition, she carried rows of videos, porn site subscriptions, and a massage parlor connected to the back room. The lady who owned the place was a small, chubby black lady with a fro. As soon as they walked through the front door, the owner swooped in on them.

"How can I help y'all today?" She asked with a smile. Peppermint thought she had the nicest fro she had ever seen. It was combed perfectly, and even throughout her entire head. She had huge, circled earrings, and a sunny, sweet disposition with how she approached them. Her smile radiated throughout the entire store.

Peppermint told her about measuring her boyfriend's penis, and Nancy asked, "So, you have confirmation he's eight, but you don't have confirmation of anybody being twelve inches?"

"That's right," she said.

"This is a sex shop, and I can promise you those boys are lying," she said. "When you two decide to engage in coitus, please use protection and vaginal lubrication." She looked directly at JJ, and said, "You're a big kid downstairs, and since you haven't engaged in sex before, you need to be extremely careful and take your time."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Remember, safety and precaution goes along way," Nancy said. She was soft spoken, Peppermint thought, kind of like the local librarian. "Sex can be cathartic, pleasurable, and create a strong bond between two people; however, it can also be destructive, soul breaking, and diseased." She paused for a moment, and walked over to her computer. "I've been located in this same spot for ten years." She smiled. "The only other thing more stable than my shop in this neighborhood is you two. You guys have been holding hands, walking by, and happy since you were tiny tots." She pulled up an image of JJ and Peppermint when they were only five-years-old walking with his father. They were hopping on the bus, and giving him a hug.

When the two teens saw the picture, they both started sobbing.

"I didn't mean to upset you guys," she said with a grimace.

"We're not upset," Peppermint said with a watery smile. "We're happy."

"That's my father, James Johnson," JJ said. "He was killed about four years ago." He pulled out some money, and placed it on the counter, and said, "How much for you to send this picture to me?"

"Just give me your email address, child," she said with a smile.

He purchased several lubricants, some condemns, and a sexy, black exotic nightgown for Peppermint, and then gave his email address to the attendee. He left out of the sex shop with a sack of goodies, and then he received the photo of his father dropping them off at the bus stop when he was only five. He then sent it to Peppermint.

"This is beautiful," she said with a smile. "We don't have a lot of photos of him."

"This photo is special," he said, "It has us in it."

They continued their march down the sidewalk, and a blond haired girl with spectacles, bumped into Peppermint, and it knocked her into the wall. "Be careful, Spectacles." She thought the blond girl's clothes were rather nerdy, and the way she bounced around almost made her laugh. The cars moved about the area at a methodically slow pace because of the heavy traffic.

The woman pushed her glasses up on her face, straightened her blouse, and then said, "Sorry." She was about to turn away, and start her march, when Peppermint spoke to her.

"Sorry? You need to take your sorry butt back to National City," she said, "Spectacles, looks like Supergirl." She smiled at JJ.

"No she doesn't," he snapped. "Look at those glasses. Look at the way she wears her hair. Supergirl is dreamy."

"I could be Supergirl. I have style." She paused for a moment, and then said, "My name is Kara, by the way, and I'm a reporter with Catco."

"You're right, JJ," she said. "There's no amount of makeup can make Spectacles a Supergirl."

"You two are horrible," Kara said as she walked away. "And what are you kids doing with a sack full of condoms and lubricants?"

"You're definitely a reporter," JJ said, "Nosey as hell."

As soon as Kara turned around, Peppermint snapped a picture of her, and laughed.

"Why did you do that?" She asked.

"It's a rough area of town, Spectacles," she said, "If anything happens, we can report we saw you."

"Yeah. You shouldn't be on this side of town without an escort," JJ said.

"Well. I know some people," Kara said. She pointed to JJ, and said, "I know the Guardian."

"Get out of here," he said. "Well, just know we're fans of the Guardian, and if you need any help just call JJ and Peppermint."

After Peppermint and JJ dropped off the items they purchased at his apartment, they walked over to the school, and approximately ten thousand people roamed the area. Stacks of flowers and makeshift memorials inundated the school's grounds, and it stretched from the building to the street. Peppermint sat on JJ's lap as they watched all the crowds and speakers give words of encouragement and mourn the victims of the crime. They sat against the metal fence, and Jimmy pulled a peppermint ball out of his pocket, and handed it to her. She had never seen so many beautiful brown and yellow people in one place in her entire life. She popped the candy in her mouth, and leaned back on JJ's chest. The crowd swayed and sang, and from what she could tell, food vendors sold pizzas, hot pockets, chicken, funnel cakes, rice cakes, fried rice, and Vietnamese sandwiches.

JJ ran his hands through her hair, and she enjoyed his touch as he worked his way down to her shoulders, and then back.

"Is that Spectacles?" Peppermint said. She pointed over to her as Kara talked with different people in the crowd.

"That's her," he said, "Her style is unique unto her."

"She's kind of boxy," she said, "She has nerd power."

"You sensed that too?" Jimmy asked.

Kara looked over at the couple, and pointed to them, and they pointed back, and waved. Peppermint watched the entire park, and saw Johnny on the other side, and he looked disheveled. He towered over everybody, and he looked like he'd been crying. The smell of baked funnel cakes reverberated throughout the area, and a black man in a nice suit, bald head, and fancy shoes walked with Kara while eating cotton candy. A young woman, no more than sixteen or seventeen from what Peppermint could tell-walked near the tall black man as if she were actually talking to him.

"That's the girl who built that hideous contraption on top the warehouse," JJ said. "She entered Misses Nater's hospital room, and did something to her."

"That tiny thing?" Peppermint said with her nose turned up. "She looks no more than fifteen."

"She's different," he said, "She might be meta. Let's go talk to her."

"Let's not start any trouble, JJ," she said.

"It's no trouble," he said. She hopped to her feet, and pulled him up off the ground. They watched the young woman as she meandered around the area for about fifteen minutes, and then she headed up the hill, away from the crowd, and the couple continued to follow her. Peppermint looked at her-her dress, styled in the fashion of the renaissance period, and it was quite odd. From a distance, came the subway train, confirmed by the rumbling sounds and vibrations that rocked the entire city. Through the dense traffic, walkers, and raggedy buildings the young girl continued to march down the street, and the couple tried to keep up with her. Suddenly, the girl looked back at the couple, smiled, and then flew into the air, and disappeared.

"Holy sheesh!" JJ exclaimed.

Back at the school…

Peppermint and JJ sat at the food court with a plate of fries and hotdogs. They had been there for about ten minutes, and planned on being there for at least twenty more. Invariably, also, the school band played some classical tunes, and the chorus department sang incredibly. When the mayor took the stage, he berated the school, school board, and anybody else he could find for hiring Miss Nater. In the crowd of thousands, she didn't seem to have a friend, nor a companion, nor a single person who cared about her. All of sudden, Johnny charged the stage, grabbed the microphone, and screamed, "You didn't know her. None of you knew her. Somebody experimented on Miss Nater, and made her meta."

Immediately the cops grabbed him, escorted him off the stage, and placed him under arrest. The crowd cheered loudly, and when he walked past Peppermint and JJ, she saw the tears flowing down his face. His hair was ragged, but his visage was somber, and his lips and nose were bloodied. His sadness was on display. JJ hopped up immediately, and ran over to the cops.

"Officer, Miss Nater was his favorite instructor," he said, "Please let him go. He's my cousin, and I'll take him home."

"Emotions are high," Peppermint said, "Let us take him home."

"He's our star basketball player," JJ said, "There's no reason this one incident should destroy his career."

"You two are quite annoying," the officer said. He unlocked Johnny's hands, and then said, "Get him out of here."

Back at the apartment…

Her parents left, the directions set on the table, no bodily fluids on the furniture was in bold, black letters, and then she sighed. She held up the note to JJ, and he snickered. He turned on the large screen television, sat on the couch, and then thumbed through the channels. The sun was down, the streets were quiet, and nothing seemed to be odd in the neighborhood from what she could tell. She placed a small, hot tea on the table for JJ, and then one for herself. She lay in his arms, and sipped intently on the chicory tea while watching the news. She ran over to her room, grabbed her new, sexy negligee, and was going to wear it until she smelled her armpits. Immediately, she headed for the shower, washed off, and then put on some perfume and lotion. She wanted everything to go right, and after she donned the black, sexy outfit, she ran into the living room, and JJ lay on the couch in his underwear and football shirt. His appearance was youthful but rugged, and his body was lively and muscular, and when it came to his manhood, it fought its way out of his underwear. She turned out the light and went over to JJ on the couch. She kissed him for a long time, and his penis was like a flexed arm: strong and hard. She kissed him all over, and it was nothing like the movies. He had held her nightly since they were young kids, and they had seen each other nude on multiple occasions. When they changed into their bathing suits, his manhood dangled without any fanfare. It just stood their lazily minding its own business. It didn't want any attention or ask for any attention. But now, his manhood was attentive, and wanted to be caressed, noticed, and relieved of its seminal fluid. She placed on the condemn, and it unraveled before it traveled down the shaft of his erect penis. At first, she merely thought he needed bigger condemns, but she didn't know any better.

She felt him as he picked her up, laid her gently on the couch, and pulled down her nightie. He suckled her breast, and gently pulled the gown over her hips, down around her ankles, and off her feet. He guided his way on top of her body, and before she knew it, he entered her, and it hurt badly. She could barely stand the pain as he thrusted and humped and pushed his way to relief. He might have been five minutes into the pounding before it became pleasurable. His grunts were so savage, so beastly that it turned her on. He was usually calm in every situation, and she loved that about him. It was one of his best qualities, but when it came to sex, he became feral and uncouth. He grabbed her hips, and pulled her into him while he pounded her wildly, and she screamed loudly. It was painfully pleasurable, and she felt herself release. It was the first time she climaxed, and after he finished, he completely collapsed on her, and it felt wonderful. When she squirmed from underneath him, he sat up on the couch, and his penis was partially erect. The condom was full of semen, and she held it at the base of the rubber, and slid it off. Some of it wasted on his midsection. She tied it up, tossed it in the trash in the bathroom, and then cleaned him up. The couch had a large wet spot from her, and that was unexpected. She laughed a little as she wiped away all the sweat and semen from around his penis, and then he put on his underwear, and held her bare body.

She examined his body, the muscles so tight and flexed, but gentle and smooth, and the symmetry was almost perfect. "I hope everything went right," she said.

He played with her hair for a moment, and then said, "It was wonderful," he traced her lips with his right finger, and then said, "I'd like to do this at every opportunity."

She laughed, and then there was a loud bang that startled them. It almost sounded like thunder, and Peppermint didn't know what to think. The lights went out in the building, and then the entire neighborhood blackened.

"What the hell?" JJ asked as he ran over to the window. He looked around for a moment, and then said, "I don't see anything."

Peppermint, after placing on JJ's football shirt, walked over to the window, looked around for a moment, and then said, "What's that on the roof?"

"It's that girl," JJ said with a grimace.

It was dark, full dark, and there wasn't any lights in the entire city except on the warehouse. She felt him press his manhood against her, and he was ready for another round. He led her to her bedroom, placed her on the bed, and she placed a condom on his massive business. He climbed between the sheets, climbed on top of him, and then sat on top of him. A sonic boom-a flash of light-reverberated throughout the entire area, and then a radioactive stream of light engulfed the area. When the lights came on throughout the city, the lights didn't come on in her room. She climbed off of him for a moment, and ran over to the light switch, but it didn't come on at all.

"Sheesh," she said, "The lights are off."

JJ ran out of the room when another blast of energy bounced all over the city, and it hit the apartment complex. She stuck a peppermint ball in her mouth, and a radioactive band of energy went across her body, and she collapsed.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

(Nigga NIght)

The blackened sky-fantastic and ominous-looked beautiful from the roof of the warehouse. Little Africa smelled of shame and pain, and as Rachel looked from the rooftop, she had no doubts about her particle accelerator, what it could do, and the results it would produce. She heard the vibrations from the subway, the honks from the cars, and the innocent screams-all night long while she stood on the warehouse rooftop. It was nine-fifteen in the evening, and she was ready to flip the switch. She expected the entire city to go black for five minutes before the machine massed enough energy to send out its cosmic rays to change Little Africa.

The machine stood quietly in the center of the rooftop with all its buttons and switches, and while she enjoyed her creation, she pressed the on button. The crimson and azure colored buttons flickered for a moment, and then were solid, indicating the machine was ready to absorb as much power as needed before releasing the cosmic band.

She watched the black folks at the corner church called Trinity First Baptist Church, and a flock of mourners walked inside. But they were neither churches, nor places of solace, nor meant to give strength to African Americans, they were slaughterhouses for sheep who spent their entire lives avoiding logic and reason. She walked over to her machine, and her roommate now stood in the background in her black dress. She felt Ju try to use telepathy to enter her mind, but she immediately thought about a deck of cards, and it caused Ju's nose to bleed. Every time she felt a tingle in her head, she threw up a deck of cards or something else to block the intrusion. Finally, she crept into her roommate's head, and danced around for a moment, and when she did, she saw what pained her the most.

Inside Ju Gee's Head: Eleven Years Earlier

Government tests came with a lot of questions, and some questions weren't meant to be answered by the normal, human mind. Every once in awhile, and rarely, the government sent schools a test that looked for the students with gifts, but not ordinary abilities; they searched for kids with telepathic abilities or who could see future events. Most students with special powers didn't mention them out of fear. A rumor roamed around Little Africa about government officials kidnapping kids with gifts, and it wasn't for membership in the Justice Corp. When a gifted student surfaced, other students in the program conveniently arrived on the scene. It was the way Cadmus worked.

August 1, 2006.

Ju Gee sat in her first period English class when she was a Sophomore in highschool, next to Michael Baker, a tenebrous skinned kid with bifocals. She hadn't ever seen anybody as black as him in her entire life, and she found his look fascinating. His strong face gave way to pain and discourse in his life. His thick lips told a story of kindness, and his round eyes gave him a look of innocence. She tried to avoid turning to see his fascinating features, but she found him alluring. Everything about him was like forbidden fruit, and she needed to focus on her studies. She admired his wide shoulders and broad chest. His shirt gently outlined his pectoral muscles, and his arms were long, muscular, and baked in the rays of the sun. He stood straight in his chair, and when he stood up to drop off his questionnaire, he must have stood approximately six foot two.

Nobody in the entire school resembled Michael. In fact, she didn't know anybody at all in Little Africa who resembled him. His lineaments were drawn in such a way that ancient civilizations would have chosen him to be their god. Before she ever spoke to him, she thought his very presence tormented her because she couldn't touch his face, trace his abs, or fondle his phallus. She wanted to speak to him so badly because she thought once he spoke that he'd be shallow and weak minded. His head would be filled with meaningless pop music, and he wouldn't care about the world around him. She hoped that he'd be an inner city, uncouth thief with no morals, and every stereotype mentioned about black people in the media. She hoped his outer beauty would be contrary to his character, and then she could retreat in shame for ever admiring anybody as black as him.

Suddenly, a pain shot through her mind, and then she heard voices, and it said, "I'm tired of all these damn coons. Tomorrow, I'm going to kill every last one of them." She looked around the classroom for a moment, but didn't know who said it. There were four white kids in the entire class, and she thought one of them said it, and she tried her best to discern the culprit. The voice was loud and distinct, and as far as she knew, a horrid view of the immediate future. When the class bell rang, she jumped in her seat, and then it acted as an on switch for the voices, and they wouldn't stop for nothing. At first, she thought madness had set in like it did her grandfather, but after awhile, she realized she could read the thoughts of the other people. When she walked down the hallway, she heard a distinct voice in her head, and he talked directly to her.

"I knew you were a telepath," the voice whispered in her mind. "It's Michael Baker by the way."

"How do you shut off the voices?" She asked.

"Meet me during lunch by the fences," he said, "We'll work on it."

"Okay," she whispered.

By the fence…

On the fringes of the school grounds grew batches of balloon flowers, and they circled the entire campus. Everything felt serene by the fences, and it made her feel a certain way, a positive way. Michael leaned against the fence, and he was so tall and dark-and beautiful. He placed his head against hers, and he traveled deep into her mind to help her control the voices. He sat her on the ground, placed his hands on either side of her head, and she felt him rumbling around in her head, and after the first session, she was able to block out all the extra voices.

"I heard a young man claiming he was going to shoot up the school," she whispered telepathically.

He laughed. "Don't worry about him," he said with a smile. "The cops have already seized his weapons and arrested him.

"How did they know?" She asked with a smile.

"I helped them out occasionally," he said. "I often work with other government agencies."

For nearly thirty minutes during lunch for the next two weeks, he helped her with her abilities. She realized-almost immediately-he gave her a new understanding of life, and he taught her how to use her abilities as a weapon. Eventually, he taught her how to connect to his mind, and create a place of serenity that was almost like heaven. It was like a drug, a place where she could abscond from the pains of living with her abusive, cop of a father who preyed on the people of Little Africa.

8/6/2006…

Telepaths were extremely powerful, but they didn't have the ability to connect with people on the other side of the school. She worked hard every day with her range, but she couldn't enter a mind farther than one hundred yards, but once she implanted a thought into a mark's head, it stayed for months. But when she came home to her quaint, little house, her father often sat in his easy chair, hands down his pants, and sucking down a beer. Her mother fixed the table, and served up some chicken fried rice for the third day in a row. It smelled pretty good to her, and the kimchi brought out the flavor in the food. It was a small house with two bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, living room, and a den. Quickly, she walked over to the table, sat down, and filled her plate with rice and kimchi, and began to eat. Her father wobbled over to the head of the table, and he scoffed at the food.

"The same shit every fucking day," he said with anger in his voice. "I should go to Bridget's house."

Her mother sat on the other end of the table, and she didn't say anything in response to what her father said. "Who's Bridget?" Ju asked.

"Some poor girl he's raping," her mother said with a snarl. "You should be ashamed of yourself. How many blasian babies are walking around Little Africa with your face?

"Maybe if you knew how to suck a penis I wouldn't stray!" He exclaimed.

"Oh, I can't even finish my food," Ju said, "I'm grossed out."

"Grow up," Mister Gee said, "How many cocks have you swallowed?"

Her face filled with fear, her heart sank into her stomach, it was in the exact place it needed to be from such an accusation. "That's not fair," she said, "I've been respectable."

"You're disgusting," Mrs. Gee snapped. "My mother told me you were worthless."

He laughed for a moment, and then took a few more bites of his food. He sat back in his chair, with his hands on his protruding belly, and gave Mrs. Gee and insidious glare. "You need to talk to your momma."

"About what?" Mrs Gee asked. Nervous, a thousand thoughts raced through Ju's mind, and she didn't know what to think. She sat in fear for what would spew from his hateful mouth. The mood in the room was dark, pure black, and the attitudes were rotten to the core.

"I use to come to National City to see you, and then after you went to sleep, I would screw your mom," he said with a serious look on his face. "It was like a ritual."

"You lie," she said. She seethe in anger, and the accusation seemed to burn her deeply.

"It wasn't until Ju turned ten that we stopped our relationship," he said with a smile. He looked over at Ju, and said, "Your Uncle Kevin is actually your half brother."

The atmosphere was full of shame, and Ju ran to her room, dove onto her bed, and tried to cry it out while her parents continued to argue. Her mother threw dishes on the ground, flipped over the kitchen table, and then she heard her father run out of the house. Her mother then called her mother who lived in National City, and after about ten minutes, she heard her Momma screaming, "How could you screw my husband behind my back?" She sat on her bed, rocking back and forth, and crying at what she heard coming from the next room. She knew her father screwed her family every day he went to work on the streets of Little Africa. He raped black girls between the ages of twelve to thirty, and the people knew about it. She looked down at her sage blanket, and laid her head on her pillow, when her Momma screamed, "So, Kevin and Lucy are his children?" It sent a shockwave through her mind, all the way down to her heart, and it palpitated wildly. Her uncle and aunt were well in their twenties, and she never imagined her father and grandmother sharing a bed, but it didn't matter. She ran into multiple blasians throughout Little Africa with her face, but a little darker, and without any protection from the local police.

She walked out of her place of solace, into the living room, and watched her Momma throw her landline across the floor. Ju scrutinized her mother's face, the eyes full of anger and shame, and when she looked over at her, she crinkled her nose. The pain was thick and murky, and when she went to speak on her father's madness, the words escaped her. She wanted to be simple like Michael taught her when entering into a mind with telepathy. In order to protect the subject's mind, the telepath had to practice, work on his or her che, and use the right words so the subject would understand. Kindly, she walked over to her mother, sat her on the couch, and hugged her for a long moment. Everything seemed so surreal, and she wanted the pain to stop.

"It's not his betrayal that hurts," Mrs. Gee said softly. Her voice was brittle, and the tears flowed. "It's my mother's betrayal that has broken me."

'It will be alright, Momma," she said.

Her mother smiled as she cried and sobbed loudly. She shook her head in disagreement, and said, "With you, he has thirty-three kids, and thirty one of them grew up or live right here in Little Africa."

"How can you stand it?" Ju asked lamentingly.

"I've learned to live with it," she said softly. "The madness started when I was pregnant with you."

"Are Brian and Lisa Denison my half siblings?" She asked.

"Yes," she said, "The Denison twins are your siblings, and they know it, but nobody talks about it. All five kids in that family are your father's children."

"Why didn't you report him?" She asked softly.

"I did," she said. "I sent letters. I took pictures of him molesting children, but nobody cares when they're not white. There's video, pictures, and DNA in every part of Little Africa, but nobody cares. There's no protection in Little Africa for the people who need it the most."

Pain filled her life, and she wanted an escape, a place where she could be at peace, and forget the world around her. Bad as her life was, and her father's criminal behavior proved it, Michael had exactly what she needed to escape. She tried her best to be the rock for her Momma, but the pain in her heart was too intense. "I have to go see Michael, Momma," she said.

"You're leaving?" She asked softly. Her watery eyes broke her daughter's heart.

"It's an important homework assignment," she said. She walked out the house, and ran approximately six blocks down the street.

Michael's …

Ju's perception of what was and what should be was blinded by the stereotypes that filled her mind, and she hated herself for that. The Cadillacs, the golden rimmed cars, and large, black dice hanging from the car's roof interior was her perception of black life. She expected kids greeting her with cherry red, Kool-aid lips, braids, and high top shoes. When she approached Michael's house, it was quiet, and the only car in the driveway was small, boxy, and European. It was rather reserved. The flowerbed located in front of the house was nice: roses, tulips, and a row of nice, terror cotta pots along the sides. She walked up to the front door, knocked, and waited for somebody to open it.

When the door finally opened, she stood in front of Michael, and suddenly her knees became weak, and she nearly fell on the ground, but he caught her. She felt his massive arms pick her off the ground, take her to the couch, and then he gave her some water. Quickly she glanced around the living room, and didn't see one picture of Jesus. It confused her because most of the students were highly religious.

Michael smiled. "Remember, as a telepath, you have to learn to keep your thoughts suppressed." He sat down beside her, and said, "Religions are to control the vassals. I've talked to my boss about you, and she wants you to come into the program."

"To be an agent like you?" She asked.

"Yes. There's a young child with great powers beyond anything I can fathom who she needs monitoring while she receives her education at the University," he said. "You'd have to enter training immediately to have the mental strength to keep up with her."

She paused for a moment, and then ask, "Will it take me away from here?"

"For a little while," he said with a calm demeanor. "You'd spend the next year or so in Gotham, and then you'll return to National City, attend the University, and your roommate will be a child named Rachel Ballard."

"Couldn't you do this?" She asked.

"No," he said. "I wouldn't be able to gain her trust like you." He paused for a moment. "She's already stronger than us combined, but soon her mind will be on par with the gods."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

He smiled. "We're like the lowly creatures of the universe," she said, "The trash. This child comes about every new age to bring about the Destroyer."

"What's the Destroyer?" She asked.

"Something we all fear," he said, "He has destroyed worlds in every iteration. Since Rachel is born on Earth, we believe the Destroyer will come from here."

"But what's the importance of all this?" She asked.

"If we can control the birth of the Destroyer, we can steer him in a wise direction, and bring about a god who's caring and loveable towards human kind."

"Can we stop this Destroyer?" She asked.

He laughed. "He's woven into the matrix of the universe," he said, "We can't stop him, but we can change his philosophy of life with outside influences."

Ju sat on his couch, thought about what he said, and she found it unbelievable. She began to cry, and Michael immediately held her, and then she felt a tingle in her head, but instead of fighting back his intrusion, she wanted him to see her pain. When he stood up, she could tell what he saw appalled him, and worry overcame his face. She sat back on his couch, and watched him as he paced back and forth, and then he spoke.

"So, your father is the cop making all these blasian babies," he said with a grimace. "Just the thought rattles me because the sex isn't consensual. It's out of fear of going to jail these women give in."

"I hate him," she said with a grimace. She wiped the huge tears from her face, and played with her fingers. "My entire world is torn, Michael. There's no hope for my poor Momma, and I don't know what to do. She's thirty-five, no skills, a graduate degree, but no skills, and the way she talked this morning I think she might commit suicide." He walked over to her, placed his hand on the back of her neck, and she leaned her head against his hip.

"You've known for awhile about your father," he said with a grimace. "Do you remember that black girl, Charlie Ray?"

She paused for a moment, and then said, "The one the cops found in the dumpster across from the old warehouse?"

"Yeah. That happened over the summer," he said. "She filed a complaint with the NCPD, and the next day they pulled her body out of the dumpster."

"Dear, God," she said with a grimace. "Do you think it was my father?"

He sat down beside her, and said, "You have the power to find out." He placed his hands on her face, and said, "Don't forget what I taught you. Enter into your father's mind, and search for the answers."

"What will come of it?" She asked with a grimace.

"Nothing as far as justice for Charlie," he said calmly. "But at least you'll know."

An older lady walked into the room, sat on the easy chair, and smiled, and from what she could tell, she wasn't just any black woman. She had a military style haircut with a chiseled face, small waist, and sophisticated.

"You're Michael's telepathic friend?" She asked telepathically. "I'm his mother Olivia Baker. Our boss needs you in the program for a special assignment."

"Michael told me," she said out loud.

"Then let me say this aloud," she said softly. "Rachel is the Herald of the Destroyer. Every old world, far removed from Earth, has tales of the Destroyer, including Earth."

"I've never read anything about him," she said.

"We refer to him as Lucifer, Abaddon, and Hades to name a few," she said. "It was the ancients way of understanding this great power that wiped out entire civilizations to bring peace to the universe."

Michael tuned in, and said, "He's the reason for the rise of metahumans." He paused for a moment. "Some will fight against him while others will join his cause."

"Is he evil?" She asked.

"It depends on where you fall on his radar," she said with a smile. "It's the third time he's been born on Earth."

"Did he spare us?" She asked.

"No," she said, "He wiped out several branches of humans nearly five hundred thousand years ago. I believe one of them was the Homo Erectus."

"What is his criteria for wiping out entire species?" She asked.

"When a species fails to grow or prohibits other species within the same race from growing, he may wipe out the species that's in the way." She paused for a moment, and said, "It's highly possible he will destroy the human race at some point," she said softly. "It's the reason we're putting so much energy into ensuring the Herald is educated and trained accordingly."

"So, he wipes them out with the snap of his fingers?" She asked.

"No. He'll put a disease in place or a condition that stops the breeding process," she said, "He'll use science to wipe out a race over time, so he can analyze them. If they find redemption, he can save the species."

"How do you know all of this?" She asked.

"The Great Mother on Earth is a clone of the original," she said, "The original put the Destroyer in the matrix of the universe, and now we work for her."

"So, is the Destroyer immortal?" She asked.

"Yes," she said, "But if he goes into a yellow sun, his essence is hidden from the universe, and another Destroyer will emerge."

"But why would he do that?" She asked.

She laughed. "His greatest weakness is his ability to love. He always chooses to love a woman who resembles his mother and another one who resembles his sister, and in most cases, is his sister. If one of them dies, his urge to retreat to the sun takes over."

"So, his loves are reborn as he's reborn?" She asked.

"Exactly," she said. "Don't discuss any of this with anybody because it's only known amongst the telepathy."

"That's important, Ju," Michael said with a grimace. "You're part of Cadmus now, and we work in secret for the safety of humanity."

Olivia left out of the room, and Ju sat back on the couch feeling the visit complexed her life, and then she said, "When will I meet Amanda?"

"Soon," he said with a smile. "Cadmus is global, and we're actively looking for more telepaths."

Michael walked into the kitchen for about five minutes, and came back with some ice cream and cookies, and it was bit of a surprise. She sat on the couch, and ate the goodies quietly while watching television. She tried her best to keep her thoughts from spewing out into his head, but she put a lot of cathexis into him. The smell of his musk drove her insane, and she wanted to taste her lips on his. What a man, what a joy to see such intelligence formed into a body of a god, strong, almost perfect in every way, quietly eating ice cream on the other end of the couch. Contemplating her next move, she contemplated her next move, but didn't know how to execute it, so she aggressively slid beside him with her ice cream, and bumped his shoulders. She sat close enough to feel his breath, and it was refreshing, but she needed to know where they stood.

"Are we an item?" She asked out of nowhere. She didn't know what to say, but she had to say something. "Telepaths date right?"

He laughed. "I assumed we were," he said, "I mean you're practically sitting on top of me." He paused for a moment, and then said, "I just don't let anybody sit on top of me like this." Placing his ice cream on the end table, he picked her up, and placed her on his lap, and started tickling her. They played and laughed on the couch for about thirty seconds before he kissed her intimately. "Yeah. We're an item."

Next day…

Elated, Ju walked through the hallways without a care in the world, full of energy, and happy that Michael confirmed their relationship. She stood at her locker, punched in the combination, as she always did, and opened it to a surprise: "All the blasians are talking, and we think you need to talk with us. I don't like the way we became family, but we're family. Meet us after school. Baby Cakes."

Quickly, she closed the locker, and leaned against, and as soon as she caught her breath, Michael swooped her up, and kissed her on the lips. He then whispered to her telepathically, and said, "I see. Do you need me to come with you?"

He placed her on the ground, and they walked quietly to class. "I think so," she said telepathically. "It only makes sense."

After School…

In order to understand the anger and resentment, Ju needed to listen to her siblings, and it was more than a few of them, brought into the world through rape and disorder, black and Asian-and angry, bound in a beautiful brown skin with almond eyes, kinky hair, and soft, thick lips. They were of all different sizes and builds, but they were all Gees, regardless of their birth certificates.

Babycakes stepped forward, and Ju knew her from elementary, but she never talked to her. She was in several of her classes, and she noticed the resemblance, but didn't acknowledge it. Now, she watched the young teenager stand in front of her, slender and beautiful, discuss what to do about their father. She counted all the kids by the fence, and Michael stood behind her. They held hands as they walked up to the group of half siblings.

"We are eight of your siblings in the same grade as you," Babycakes said with a grimace. "I know of two in the ninth, three in the eighth, and two in the seventh." She paused for a moment, and said, "It would behoove any blasian student to refrain from being intimate with another one because we're all siblings."

"It's true," she said with a look of shame. "My father has at least thirty two kids, and my Momma reported him to the cops, but they've failed to act."

One young man walked forward with spiky, dyed blond hair, and said, "I'm Nathan 'Spike' Hanson. Just call me Spike." Ju noticed his smile was the same as her father's, and his almond shaped eyes were like her grandfathers. It was bizarre because Little Africa comprised of so many of her siblings.

"Okay," Ju said with a smile.

"I found out a year ago who my father was," Spike said, "My Momma wouldn't tell me for anything, so I asked my grandmother about my father. She didn't hold back. It pained me to know I was conceived in a back alley." He paused for a minute, and then said, "It pained me even more to know I was a product of a rape."

"The man who fathered us is a sexual deviant," Ju said angrily. "My heart aches for what he did, and it aches even more when I know the justice system failed the community. We were brought together by something ugly, but we are family. All of us."

The two twins stood by each other, and they wore matching outfits with bowties. "Lisa and Brian over here," Brian said, "We knew Officer Gee was our father, but he drops by our house on a regular basis." He paused for a moment. "We have three other siblings all fathered by him."

Another young woman with a long ponytail, narrow, oblong face, and beautiful hill-top eyes stood before her. Her eyes narrowed to a point, and her lineaments were near perfect. She was about an inch taller than Ju, and with a nice, flat stomach. Her breast were well defined, and she was definitely the hotty of the group.

"My name is Geer Mason," she said, "I knew we were all kin since grade school, but it is what it is. I can't waste my time with hating."

"Ugh. My name is Drew 'Nano' Prat," a short, young man with a muscular frame said. "I hate the sperm donor because he raped my mom repeatedly. I have two more siblings he fathered, and nobody cared to stop it."

"Vicki 'Vapor' Washington in the house," a young woman with wild hair said. "My mother overdosed on meth right after my birth, and I grew up in foster care, and then an Asian family adopted me."

"You didn't adopt their name?" Michael asked.

"No," she said, "I kept my birth name out of respect for my Momma," she said, "The Parks understood."

"The closest we'll ever get to justice is exposure," Ju said with a grimace. She squatted in place, and then said, "But we're family, and that's the truth. We need to find a way to come together more often."

"I was thinking we could meet up at Mickey's or something like that on Sunday's," Babycakes said.

"That's a good idea," Greer Mason said, "I'm free on Sundays."

"What time?" Brian asked. "We have church."

"About four or five," Ju said, "That's a good time."

October 4, 2006...

Michael and Ju walked over the hill, down the street, and into Mickey Mac's diner where two little tots-one Asian and one black-sat with their parents, and shared a cheesy fries. "I'm a Vulcan," the little boy said.

"Daddy said your red shirt means you die first," the girl said with cheese all over her face. The boy reached across the table with his napkin, and she stuck out her chin, and he wiped her face.

"Did you see that?" Ju asked with a huge grin. "Those are the cutest kids on the planet.

"I see them all the time," Michael said, "They're always together. I saw him run out the Big Mart store by himself a week ago, look around for a moment, run back into the store, and then ran out with her."

She watched the little boy grab the girl's jacket, help her get dressed, and then they skipped out of the store, and it amazed her how close they were.

When Mickey walked over to the table, she asked him about the kids, and he told her the same storyline that Michael said. "You never see them two apart," he said, "And if you look at her wrong, mess up her order, or anything like that, he'll go off. "

"I've never seen two kids so close," she said.

"There pops are best friends who served in the military together," he said, "I use to hang with them when we were kids, but I couldn't do the military stuff."

"Yeah," Michael said. "I feel you. Ju, what's your desire?"

"The Big Mick," she said.

"Mickey, make that two Big Micks and a large basket of fries," he said, "We'll share those."

Mickey laughed for a moment. "That's JJ's and Peppermint's order."

"JJ?" Ju asked.

"Yeah. The little kids you were admiring," he said, "They'll order the same thing."

After they placed the order, Ju turned to him, and asked, "Do you think my siblings and I can come together as a family?"

"It's difficult to say," he said with all seriousness. "The mind reacts to external influences, and several of your siblings had hostile thoughts towards you at the cookout Saturday."

"Me?" She asked.

"I try not to be too intrusive in these matters," he said, "They feel like you had it better than them."

"Really? My father has heavy hands, and I watched him beat my Momma and slap me around all the time. I'm not trying to win a pity party over here, but life sucks at my house. My memories have destroyed any positive memory of my childhood. The siblings who grew up without my Father in their houses are truly the lucky ones, and that's the simple fact."

"My people are all telepaths, as far back as time, and we've always worked in subterfuge," he said telepathically. "My father is trying to stop the flow of genetically enhanced grain from entering the United States from the United States of Africa."

"I didn't know they unified," she said as Mickey set the food on the table. "Thank you, Mickey."

"Not yet, but it will happen within five years," Michael said with a smile. "It's causing a problem because the nation won't pick up the dollar, and it's going to start a war."

"How do you know so much?" She asked. "We're only in high school."

"This is all we do," he said telepathically, "Cadmus is global, and agents as young as me can end up in other nations as spies."

She looked up at him, and asked, "Have the telepaths ever stopped the Destroyer?"

He stopped chewing on his hamburger for a moment, and said, "The Harbinger is a powerful telepath, and it will take one of us all our mental strength to block them when they're young. By the time a Harbinger turns twenty-one, they can reach out and kill us from half a light year away."

"Goodness," she said. "That's far."

"Not really," he said, "In our folklore, the Destroyer, from the time of his birth, can reach out, and kill us from thousands of light years away."

"But isn't it just myth?" She asked.

"No," he said, "He's real. We've collected documents from different worlds who have fled his wrath. Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, he took the form of a Doraxian. I don't remember his name, but he was called a Blue, and they were dominated by a race called The Grays. It was the one and only time the Destroyer walked a world without his strength, ring, telepathic abilities or telekinetics. It was the only time he didn't marry his sister or a woman like his mother, but he found a woman like his sister named Su'Ra Nalia, an ascetic girl from the north. The legend went that he designed powerful ships like no other in creation, and he destroyed worlds with them. But no matter the work he put into Doraxia, the Grays treated the Blues less than desirable. On average, Doraxians live three hundred to four hundred years, and in the first one hundred years, Su'Ra and the Destroyer had nearly thirty kids. I believe his last name was Naga or T'Naga. Oh. His name was E'Da T'Naga."

"E'Da T'Naga was the Destroyer?" She asked.

"Yes," he said, "After he had his thirtieth child, he came to the leaders of Doraxia, the Grays, as the Destroyer. He activated his powers, and his ring came to him almost instantly, and he assumed his original tenebrous form. They didn't recognize him as E'Da T'Naga, but as an alien who placed judgement on Doraxia. He told the leaders that the Blues were an abhorrent people, and the universe had placed judgement on them. He gave the Doraxian leadership a box with a red button on it. He told them they had thirty days to decide on pushing the red button, and when they pushed it, it would end the life of the majority of Blues on the planet. He handed the box over to the Grays, and they pushed the red button within the hour of him leaving. The Blues loved the Grays, even the ascetics who started the T program loved the Grays. E'Da T'Naga returned to his Su'Ra T'Nalia, and never said what he had done for nearly fifty years. The Grays rejoiced in the idea of the Blues dying off. The Destroyer told them to keep everything a secret from the Blues, but they didn't. They threw death in the Blues' faces, and denigrated them every day about it. Later on, the Blues came to E'Da T'Naga, and asked him if the Blues were dying, and he told them an emphatic no. He said, and I will quote from the documentation, 'Lucious Naga came for the Grays.' They all laughed at him until he assumed his natural form in front of them. His wife divorced him, and he wrote a secret will that will be revealed to the Destroyer that we're trying to control. E'Da T'Naga's genetic line became pariahs of Doraxia for killing off the so-called master race."

"He killed off an entire race of people?" She asked. "Why?"

"They treated the Blues less than Doraxians, and at one point subjugated them and murdered them with impunity. We have no belief the world can change, so if he has compassion, empathy, and understanding for the human race, he might ignore us."

"This is too much to handle," she said.

"In the Bible, the snake told the girl to eat the fruit so she may know good from evil," he said, "When a race stops gaining knowledge, and that includes empathetic knowledge, he wipes them out. The human race has regressed, and this is why Cadmus must try to influence the Destroyer when he comes."

It was approximately five in the afternoon, and the young couple sat in Martin Luther King's Park, and relaxed on the Merry-Go-Round, drank a cup of tea, and enjoyed each other's company. She needed time and patience, she had to have those things, she was depended on them to process the idea of controlling the devil. She needed a jacket, and all she had was a t-shirt, but she felt the warmth in Michael's arms. He stood up, sat behind her, and wrapped his arms around her.

Michael talked about the golden beauty of the trees, the autumn breeze, and the loss of his youth to the gift of his telepathy. She felt his embrace, a comforting hug that engulfed not only her body, but her very soul. He smelled manly with a hint of watery musk, and it was a faint cry for acceptance, but didn't need to prove anything to her; it was the other way around. Pulling out her cellphone, she snapped a selfie, and then saved it. Quickly, she stood up, and watched him as he sat on the Merry-Go-Round, and then she said, "Cheese." She snapped another picture of him, and again when he turned to the side. And even though she felt bliss in the moment, she cried because she knew next week she would be in training at Cadmus Academy in Gotham, a secret facility on the fringes of the city.

"Tell me something?" She asked facing him, arms folded, and unsure about herself, relationship, and entire existence. "I'm only a job for you?" She began to cry, and hold her chest like her heart was trying to break free. Our relationship is fleeting like the golden leaves of fall, and within days will be killed by distance and time." He stood up, and placed his hands on her face, and she backed away slowly, stood with her arms folded, and grimaced at him. "I don't know the difference between love and infatuation, pleasure and pain, but all I feel is a great loss because I realized I'm your mission. You've brought me a serenity that I can't imagine experiencing again but now your work is done, and I believe we're done."

He stood in front of her with his hands by his side, calm, and unassuming. So tall, so masculine, and so beautiful, he stood in front of her like a military commander, and then he spoke, "Cadmus has watched you for five years," he said calmly. "Sometimes students take test that doesn't make sense, but we use them to find people like you."

Ju began to palpitate, and cry uncontrollably, and then said, "All the love I felt was just your job?"

"No," he said with a smile. "Our minds have been woven together in a romantic embrace since August. We're both sixteen, you're my first relationship, and there isn't any reason I would need to start a relationship with you to recruit you into Cadmus."

"What happens when I leave for Gotham?" She asked.

"Nothing," he said, "We're Cadmus. We have money and means to stay in contact," he said. "We have video chat and access to planes," he said with a smile. "After your mother signed the release, my mother gave me permission to escort you to Cadmus."

"Were you assigned to me?" She asked.

"Yes," he said with a grimace. "I told my Momma that Ju Gee was my girlfriend, and she said, 'She's on the list of telepaths we're looking at.'" He paused for a moment, and then said, "She told me now that i started a relationship with you that you were my assignment."

"What are you saying, Michael?" She asked.

"Momma assigned you to me after she spoke to you," he said."Now, you're either my girlfriend or you're not. It's really up to you at this point." Walking away, she watched him as he leisurely traveled across the park, and left her behind. Suddenly, she felt a tingle in her mind, and he whispered telepathically, and said, "If I make it to the street, I'm just going to assume we're done."

"Wait!" She exclaimed. He turned around, and she came charging at him, leaped into his arms, and said, "You're playing hardball." Immediately, she felt like a bird with a broken wing, and had given him the power to kill her with a single blow to the head. Michael and Ju both played a game of cat and mouse, respectively, for each other's attention, and with a single charge across the park, she told him exactly where her hierarchy was in the relationship.

"Please don't drop me?" She asked softly.

"I won't," he said as he let her down.

"I meant don't drop my heart," she said.

He laughed. "I knew what you meant."

October 10, 2007…

After a year in the program, Ju's abilities blossomed, and she now had the finesse to erase other people's memories with precision. She stood tall, some sixty-eight inches with long, black hair, and she wore wired glasses. She went back to her parent's home, but had more than enough money for her own apartment. Her mother was ragged, a fractured spirit, and her face had crows feet in every corner. She was only thirty-seven, but the gray hairs fought for attention, to be seen, and she seemed dead, but still breathing.

A knock on the door-Michael standing on the other side-surprised her, but gave her excitement and joy, and even though she had seen him at least once a month during her training, she still craved him. The brightest light in her life was in the darkest person she knew. His skin was like midnight, glossed in the beauty of nature, and all seventy-six inches of him stood in her living room, and he excited her. He shaved his head, and it was the perfect shape and size filled with a strong mind, a strong sense of self, and a strong love for life.

"I'm glad you're back," he said as he hugged her tightly.

"I didn't play around," she said, "I put in the extra work needed to get through the course as fast as possible." They walked over to the couch, and she sat on his lap, and then said, "I need to tell you something."

"I love you," he said softly. "I think you should know that before we began."

She looked him in the eyes, and said, "Did you read my mind?"

"No," he said, "You need to know." She pressed her head against his, and filled him with her positive energy, and it immediately told him how she felt. "I'm going to National City University with you."

"Did you plan on going there?" She asked with a smile.

"Pretty much," he said, "It's a prestigious university, and produces good agents."

"So, you already had plans to attend?" She asked.

"Ju, you know I'm going because of you," he said, "Relationships don't work without putting in energy."

Ju's mother walked into the living room in her tattered, pink robe, scraggly hair, and unkempt appearance. Life battered her entire existence, and it showed in how she held herself. Ju looked at her from Michael's lap, as she leaned her back on his chest. Her mother sat in the easyboy, and immediately asked, "How are you doing, Michael?"

"Fine, ma'am," she said. Ju slid off his lap, and between him and the armrest, and then he asked, "Are you glad to have your daughter back?"

She gave a half smile, and looked over at Ju, and then Ju looked at her Momma, and said, "Momma, aren't you happy I'm home?"

She continued to smile, and then shook her head in disagreement. "There's no love in this house, dear," she said. "It hurts me that you've returned to this." Ju began crying, and Michael placed his right arm around her.

"I didn't mean to stir up anything," he said with a grimace.

"It's not your fault," she said in a brittle voice. Her lips could barely form the words. "I'm exhausted. I'm just ready to die."

"Momma!" Ju exclaimed.

She listened to her Momma discuss the sexual abuse she went through over the last year, and both her and Michael listened in horror, and then out of nowhere, she opened her robe, and showed where her husband choked her when she questioned him about the three pregnant women who filed a lawsuit against him.

"There are three more women?" Ju asked in disbelief.

"It's of no surprise," she said. "I assume there's many more."

"Mrs. Gee, you need to leave this situation," Michael said.

"What can I do?" She asked with a grimace. "I have no skills, no job, no nothing."

Michael stood up, and he towered over the Asian woman while she sat in the easy chair, and said, "Have you heard of metahumans?" He asked.

"Yes," she said, "It's been on the television."

"I'm a meta," he said, "I have the ability to restore your confidence, and give you the strength needed to leave." He knelt down beside her, and Ju watched him place his hands on her Momma's head. Suddenly, Mrs. Gee vibrated in the easy chair for about five minutes, and when Michael backed away, she looked confident. "How do you feel?"

She smiled. "Incredible." Quickly, Mrs. Gee hopped out of the easy chair, and went to her bedroom, and Ju sat back on Michael's lap, and they watched television.

It was a little after six in the evening when Mr. Gee rampaged through the front door, and gave one look at Michael, and said, "Why are you in my house?"

"I'm with your daughter," he said.

"So, you like em black?" He said with a grimace.

"Why must you be such a horrid person?" She asked. "Michael has been my boyfriend for over a year, and now you're acting like you don't know."

"Who the hell are you talking to?" He snapped, and charged for her, and out of nowhere, he passed out on the ground.

"What happen?" She asked.

"It's one of our abilities," he said. He removed Mr. Gee's weapon, and emptied it. "It's not safe to stay here. Get your momma and things, and we can get you a place."

"Remove his ankle weapon," Ju said as she pointed to it.

Quickly, Ju and her mother packed up their things, and Michael picked them up in his small and reliable, European vehicle, and honked his horn. Mr. Gee ran out the house, Michael stepped out the vehicle, and the short cop tried to place the seventeen-year-older under arrest. Ju ran out right behind her father, and said, "Leave him alone! You destroyed your family, and should be ashamed!"

Several young, sizeable blasian kids arrived on the scene, and helped Mrs. Gee out of the house, and then more came. Within fifteen minutes, thirteen blasian kids over the age of fourteen arrived on the scene, and escorted Mrs. Gee off the property. They surrounded her, and placed her in the backseat of the small, compact car, and then Ju jumped in the front passenger seat. But before she entered the car, she said to her father, "Don't ever contact us."

October 11, 2007…

The news about the cops shooting Richard Ballard built-up traction over the last two months, and groups against police brutality took to the street. The cops claimed Mister Ballard reached for something in his boot, but in the video, he wasn't wearing any boots. It didn't matter. The news media released a photo of a man's face battered and beaten, and they made the claim Mr. Ballard attacked the cop, and was killed in self defense. The battered cop's picture made its rounds on the Internet and then the local news stations, and for some reason, the public believed Mr. Ballard was just a common criminal.

"If he attacked the cops, then he deserved what he got," Ju said with a grimace. "It's a dangerous job."

Michael laughed for a second, and said, "Don't you know who that man is?" He looked at her as she lay on the couch, and he sat on the floor against the couch.

"Who?" She asked.

"The father of the girl who will be your roommate," he said, "He was a peaceful man who worked for us, and nurtured Rachel." He paused the television when the battered cops picture came on the screen, and said, "He didn't do any of that. Mr. Ballard had a keen mind that Cadmus put a lot of money behind." He paused for a moment, and said, "She's only eight-years-old, and it's outside forces that teach us who we are. Not only did the cops kill her father, but they turned him into a monster." He stood to his feet, and walked over to the door.

"Where are you going?" She asked.

"I'm heading home, but after you look up Terry Blaze's photo, please give me a call," he said. "Please don't call me until you look up his photo."

She watched Michael exit the apartment, and he never looked back, and since the first time they met, he had always looked back, even after arguments. Her phone set on the edge of the couch, and she didn't want to get up at all because she was in a comfortable position. Her Momma worked at Pho Bang's, a soup restaurant across the street from the apartment complex, and if not for the tips, she wouldn't survive at all. Finally, she mustered up enough strength to reach for her cell phone, and googled Terry Blaze, and the same bloodied, cop photo popped up except he wasn't a cop at all. The photo was of a man who damaged his face in a motocross accident, and to her shame, she believed everything the media said about Rachel's father without question.

Never in her life did she feel more wrong than seeing the battered face of a supposed cop in her entire life, but what really made her a cruel person was her inability to empathize with the victim. She saw the media lie about Rachel's father attacking the cop, but it didn't matter. She didn't have an empathetic bone in her body for the man. In the back of her mind and to the front, she kept saying he must have been doing something to cause his own death, but the video only showed him tying his shoe. He didn't have a chance to put his hands in the air, and in the last seconds of the video, he shielded his daughter from the gunfire.

Moments later she turned on the news, and video of the battered cop came on the screen, and the reporter said they accidentally put up the wrong photo, they didn't actually have a photo of the cop to show. She took it as a simple mistake, but couldn't measure the amount of damage the photo did to the victim's character. She couldn't fathom the amount of damage it did to the victim's wife. And even though she knew about Rachel, she couldn't find a reason to care how it would change her heart. She came to the existential fact that she hated black people, and didn't have the ability to empathize with their pain. When her boyfriend sat on the floor, a black seventeen-year-old teen, she purposely said the man got what he deserved just to hurt him to a certain degree, and he didn't do anything to deserve that. She cried. She cried not because of what she thought, but because she knew her telepathic boyfriend knew what she thought.

She sat back on the couch, face swelled purple with anger, and she text Michael.

Ju: I saw the photo online, and the media lied.

Ten minutes passed, and she texted him again.

Ju: Are you upset with me?

She placed the phone on the couch, turned off the television, and relaxed for a moment. The phone didn't vibrate or beep the entire time, and it frustrated her. "Where are you?" Grabbing the phone, she texted him one more time.

Ju: I need you to answer me, Michael. Please!?

The idea of Michael knowing her innermost thoughts killed her on the inside, and she quickly realized the pain she felt wasn't for anybody else but herself. The pain in her heart was for what she might lose, and nothing for anybody else. The idea that she didn't have the ability to empathize with the people around her worried her to a certain degree. She had black brothers and sisters, and she wondered if she had feelings for them. She placed her phone on the kitchen counter, so she wouldn't stare at it in anticipation of his text or call.

She tried her best to find her humanity, but she needed work, and she didn't know where to begin. Perhaps she lost her humanity because she lived amongst the abused and forgotten of society, and they had their way of dealing with it. She had a variety of reasons, most of them needed improvement, somewhere for her lack of empathy, and it pained her. Her phone buzzed, she ran across the room, and picked it up, and it was a text from Michael.

Michael: I'm going to need some time apart from you. You know why.

Panting, she looked at the text, read it several times, and then thought about what he meant for a moment. The urge to cry overwhelmed her, and she could barely breath. Repeatedly, she pulled up the text, and the message didn't change.

Ju: OKAY!

The next day…

Michael walked through the hallway in a black, form fitting shirt that displayed his muscles with baggy pants, boots, and a silver belt. He had on his Cadmus heart monitor watch in case of an emergency, and agents could descend down on his location, extract him from danger or administer a shock to his heart if needed. He walked past her, without a glance, and kept ambulating down the hallway without looking back. She followed behind him, walked into class, set her books under her desk, and took a seat. Every few minutes, and frequently, she glanced over at Michael in the hopes he'd return a look, but he wouldn't budge. She tried to speak to him telepathically, but he blocked her.

"I'm broken, Michael," she said, and that was all she said. She didn't say anything else after that because he looked in her direction, and saw the warmth in his face.

He whispered telepathically to her, and said, "Telepathics love deeply. I have to scale back my feelings for you because you're incapable of empathy for black people."

"I can learn," she whispered telepathically.

"No. You're wired that way, Ju," he whispered telepathically. "No matter what I feel in my heart for you I won't go against my mind. We're no longer a couple."

She slammed her hands on the desk, grabbed her books, and stormed out of the classroom. The atmosphere was already tense, and she could feel his hurt, and when he said the relationship was over, it tore at her heart. She didn't expect the sudden breakup because they had been together over a year. The hallway seemed longer than usual as she ran down the hallway, and threw her books against the wall.

"You killed me, Michael," she whispered telepathically. She didn't have her jacket, only a long sleeve shirt, for comfort, and when she looked back at the school, she saw Michael walking quickly towards her. She tried to run, but everything went black. When she awoke, she lay in his bedroom, on his bed, and underneath the blankets. He sat beside the bed in his relaxed clothes: black sweats, sweatshirt, and socks.

"Tell me everything's okay with us?" She asked with a grimace. "You know what you're doing to me? I'm broken, Michael. I need work."

"Everyday I work on me," he said with a grimace. "When I have feelings deleterious to my character, I at least evaluate them." He paused for a moment. "If I have to do the unthinkable, my kill shot must hit the target, and leave as little collateral damage as possible." He wiped her head for a moment. "I realized I moved too hastily earlier, and I've given this a lot of thought that my life would suck without you."

She smiled, and kissed him deeply. "If we fight, please let's refrain from breaking up," she said with a serious look. "You're everything to me."

He stood up, took off his shirt, and she noticed his chiseled abs, ripped arms, and tight chest. He slid off his sweats, and his manhood looked threatening as he stood fully erect, shouting to the ceiling, and waiting patiently for her wetness. She hadn't engaged in coitus with anybody, and they dated for a year, but only engaged in telepathic love that brought her to a complete, unforgettable climax each time. She didn't understand why his soldier was ready for war after a heated argument, a breakup, and then a reunification. He climbed on to the bed, and she didn't know if she should touch his business as it brushed past her face when he pulled off her t-shirt. He unfastened her bra, and quickly suckled her breast like he knew every inch of them. Her heart raced, and she panted for a moment, but then he said telepathically, "Please relax." He was wide and massive, and without any warning, he slid off her sweats. She tried to hide her hairy bush, but he removed her hands, and said, "I want you the way you are, hair and all."

'Have you done this before?" She asked.

"No. You're my girl, and you've been my girl for over a year," he said, "I've dreamed of this a thousand times." He kissed her softly, and then said, "I want you like a wild animal wants a piece of meat, but if I do anything that hurts, you tell me, and I'll stop."

"Okay," she said with a half smile. She kissed him, and then she felt his two fingers from his right hand tease her clitorius wildly, and the sensation went all the way up her spine to her brain. He wiggled his fingers side to side until she soaked his bed. She didn't realize that she clutched the pillow over her face to deaden the screams during the petting session, and the rush to her head gave her a slight headache. Gently, he traced her face with his lips, and she felt the thickness of them pressed against her. It felt like love. It was an inexplicable joy that she didn't quite understand. His large hands were gentle against her body, and during all of that, he was slyly positioning himself between her legs, pushing forward, and situating his massive penis for entry. She didn't realize immediately what was taking place as he continued to press his lips softly against hers. He gripped her hips, pushed forward, and the entry caught her off guard. It was raw. It was hard. She hadn't ever felt anything like it in her entire life, and as he wrestled forward, she reared her head backwards. She felt the powers of his hips, the roundness of his buttocks, and the size of his phallus as he rammed it inside her. It was two bodies swirled together, and his tenebrous hue contrasted with her yellow complexion, and it was a thing of beauty. She learned many things about herself that night as she soaked his bed. By the end of the love session, semen, sweat, and her juices wet the bed, but they dealt with the mess, and laid in their sin like it was innate to the moment.

Ju lay in Michael's well-shaped arms, thinking, and wondering about the rush of the moment because it all felt surreal. She tasted him on her lips, and his scent drenched her body. His sweat wet her hair, and she felt his love and lust all at the same time, and she loved it. Relaxed, she closed her eyes, and in no time at all, it was morning.

October 12, 2007…

The sun hadn't come up, the room smelled of sweat and sin, and when she slid her right hand down her backside, she brushed past his erect phallus nudging at her vagina. She thought he was asleep, and tried to reposition his manly business away from her wetness, and without any warning, he had already re-entered her before she had a chance to embrace the moment. Looking back at him, at his face, and deep into his eyes, she realized he had planned the morning romp from the beginning, and the strength in his motion excited her. He rolled her on her stomach, and pounded her with wild motions. His hands clenched the mattress, and he used it as leverage as he plunged his stiffness into her wetness with extreme prejudice. And then when every nerve exploded throughout her body, he then collapsed on her, and all she could do was palpitate underneath him until the rush to her head subsided.

When he pulled back, she looked at his penis, and he wasn't wearing any protection, but semen dripped from his tenebrous nozzle, and fell onto her leg. "I'm not on birth control, Michael."

Gently, he pulled her in close, and said, "I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm heading to the corner store for the Plan B pill," she said with a grimace. "I can't afford a pregnancy at this time in my life."

She looked at him for a moment as he climbed out of the bed, and walked over to the bathroom. "I see."

"What?" She asked with a grimace. "Why are you trying to make me feel bad?"

"I'm not," he said, "I'm taking a shower."

Later in the day…

Ju fixed up her hair nicely, and wore a pink Geisha outfit and Michael wore a black suit to the Nightwing movie called ,"Nightwing: The Broken Wing." She laughed, cried, and had awful feelings because the entire movie was about his descent into madness. It was about a man, Jacob Larry, who grew up in an orphanage, discovered he had gifts, and then took on the Jokers, a gang of miscreants hellbent on destroying Gotham. Jacob Larry assumed the alternate ego of Nightwing, but the Joker organization was too much for one man, and he lost the war when Jacob Larry destroyed everything, including his own life when he fought the Jokers.

Michael held her closely during the movie, and when she looked over at him at the end of it, he had a tear rolling down his face. She loved that he was a sensitive man, and not afraid to show his feelings. She brought his masculine right hand up to her face, and kissed it. "I love you, Michael."

"I love you too, Ju," he said with a smile on his face.

Michael and Ju stood up, walked out the theater, and then out the front door. It was a busy evening in Little Africa, and the cars swooshed by like they always did. A couple of gangsters smoked cigars at the entrance, and she tucked her made-up face against his right arm. She held onto him tightly as the crowd thickened, and the faces mixed in an array of hues and angry grimaces. Something didn't seem right, and she felt a telepathic presence other than her's and Michael's. Suddenly, a loud bang-a gun blast-startled Ju, and she dove to the ground. When she turned to look at Michael, he flew backwards onto the concrete, and she realized he was hit. She turned towards the shooter, and two electric prongs hit her in the chest, and it caused her to blackout.

End

On the roof of the warehouse…

Rachel laughed. "You're such a tool." She walked around Ju as her friend stood on the roof bleeding from her face, and with a mere thought, the Asian woman fell to her knees. "What's the point of all this?"

"I was trained to keep you from the truth," she snapped.

"Even at the cost of your life?" Rachel asked with a grimace. "I've connected the dots, and now that I know you're the enemy, my defenses are on."

"You think I care about my life? I'm ready to die," she said, "I'm ready to give it all for the cause."

Rachel laughed. "It's obvious the clone, Amanda Waller, has different intentions than that of the Destroyers," she said with a grimace. "Throughout time, other Harbingers have tried to put flaws in the Great Unifier, and it always fails." She shook her head in disbelief, and then said, "Thugs murdered your boyfriend, and now you're willing to give your life to suppress my memories."

"So you've read my mind?" She asked.

"Yes," she said. "It amazes me that you've strategically manipulated my mind, but never read it. After my mother killed herself, I had a tutor come into my life, and he was a young man similar to your man."

Rachel's World 2008…

The Reverend Ronald Tyler took Rachel into his home after her Momma committed suicide, and immediately brought in a tutor by the name of Rick Thomas. He wore sweaters all the time because it was in the winter months with ugly, black rimmed glasses. He was a black man approximately six foot four or something like that. Very tall, soft spoken and his demeanor set him apart from the average person. He always smelled of a nice cologne like something a much older man would wear, and he spoke with a deep, but soft voice.

"Do you know why I'm here?" He asked with his soft voice. His eyes had a deep sadness to them, and he placed his hands on his lap.

"I think so," she said softly. "I can do things, things that other people can't."

"Like what?" He asked.

"When those devils shot my father, I heard their thoughts before I heard their voices," she said with a grimace. "But when it comes to you, I hear nothing at all."

"That's because I'm trained in blocking the thoughts of telepaths," he said with a smile. "But you're much more than a mere telepath, child."

Each time Ronald came to the house, he revealed more and more about the pain in his heart, and as Rachel grew in power, she found cracks in his abilities to block her mind. He would become angry at her intrusive behavior, and demanded she stop with the mental intrusions.

"You've hurt somebody deeply," She said. She paused for a moment, and said, "Somebody you love."

"It's obvious that you're a little urchin who has no respect for boundaries," he said.

"I'm not in your mind," she said, "It's not my fault that I'm an empath." She stood up from the table, walked around Ronald, and then asked, "Why would you hurt some poor girl so badly that you've destroyed your own heart?"

"My love for her hurt her mission, and I had to pull away," he said, "It's the job."

End

"What is the importance of this, Rachel?" She asked. "Just one of your stories that goes nowhere?"

"Are you daft, girl?" She asked with a grimace. "You've spent all these years damaging your own mind that you can't see Ronald is Michael. He didn't die. He wasn't gunned down on that sidewalk. He was ordered to leave you alone."

"You lie!" She exclaimed. "He wouldn't do that."

"Oh. Amanda played us all," she said, "You, me, and Michael. You're a tool." She looked over at her machine, and then said, "I'm about to turn it on, Ju. You have a few minutes to leave the area. You can go find your Michael. He's in Gotham, and teaches Philosophy at Gotham Prep." She watched her old friend stand in the middle of the roof with blood dripping down her face, and she looked like death. "You no longer have the strength or power to stop my mind, and you don't want to be here when I flip the switch."

"Promise me, Rachel? Promise me he's in Gotham?" She asked.

"Not only is he in Gotham, but he has always loved you," she said with a smile. "I'm speaking to him now, and he's waiting for you." Rachel stepped towards her old friend, and then Ju stumbled backwards. "You have to hurry. You have to hide from Amanda. Change your names," she said, "You'll always be on the run."

She took off her Cadmus, pinky ring, and threw it on the ground. "I'm sorry, Rachel." She looked at her charge, and then ran down the stairwell.

When Ju left off the roof, Rachel realized that she had never forgotten her humanity, and it was a good thing too. She thought about frying her brain on the spot, but Michael asked her not to do it because it was his fault Ju had become so angry through the years. But now that Ju aborted her only mission in Cadmus, Amanda would target her for elimination.

Quickly, Rachel walked over to the Particle Accelerator, flipped the switch, and the machine drained the entire city of power for approximately five minutes. The only thing with power during that time was the machine itself, and then when she pushed the bright red button on the panel, all the lights in the city came back on, and she absconded to a lead box on the side of the vessel. Suddenly a band of energy encompassed the entire area for only thirty seconds, and then once the radioactive wave hit the boundaries of Little Africa, it flew inward and infected thousands.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

One hour before "Nigga Night."

Some music played in the background, and it was a radio station with some soft, classical sounds from the eighties. A hint of cologne permeated throughout the atmosphere, and James relaxed in the tub, ruminating about life as the Guardian. The scented candle in the back-room set the mood for the night. It was one of those nice smelling candles from the Big Box store down the street from his penthouse.

The atmosphere for the night was exactly the way he wanted it, and then out of nowhere, Maggie showed up at his front door. She pouted for a moment because her bosses made her drop the case against Rachel Ballard. She sat on his sofa, and he stood in front of her in his speedo and dripping wet muscular body.

"Damn," she said with a smile. She looked directly at his bulge, but he didn't make anything of it. Shoot. Let me hop in your tub?"

"Okay," he said, "You have a bathing suit?"

"It's in the trunk of my car," she said as she ran out of the apartment.

Maggie set the mood for the night with her pouty lips, complaints about her job, and bellicose relationship with Alex. When he saw her in the living room in her two piece, he became aroused almost immediately. He hopped into the warm tub, and when Maggie entered his little sanctuary from the noise of the city, she discussed about all the cops killed the previous day; it weighed heavy on her soul because she knew many of the dead. She took a swig of her whiskey, and James watched her as she leaned back in the tub.

"I can't resist a good hot tub," she said with a smile. Looking at her cellphone, she shook her head in disbelief, and then said, "Everything is crazy, James. Alex isn't returning my calls."

"Yeah. Those Danver girls are experts in cold-shouldering folks."

James and Maggie sat quietly for a moment in his nice, four man whirlpool while he drank an Apple Martini and she enjoyed some straight whiskey. He noticed she enjoyed the hard liquor, and he didn't mind as long as she didn't throw up in his tub. He purchased the hot tub a day earlier as a gift to himself for putting Kara behind him. With all the excitement for the last couple of days, he didn't think about her at all. James thought the tub was fit for a king, and it had all the whirlpool action to soothe his aching muscles. Maggie lay across from him, her head propped against the back, a bottle of whiskey clutched in her right hand, and she lamented over losing the Ballard case. She took a swig, and then said, "Ahem," but the sharp lineaments of her face demonstrated her mood, and it wasn't a pleasant one.

"Alex is still acting funky over me telling Kara to grow up," she said as she slurred her speech. "It's like the world stops for her."

"Don't wait too long to make amends," he said, "Time apart can be a detriment to your relationship."

The calm wind didn't make a sound, and the steam from the tub stripped her hair of life, and her laughter and sadness only fueled his passion for her. The heat from the pool stressed her firm figure, and brought out her raw beauty. The top part of her bathing suit didn't conceal the excitement of her nipples, and just the outline of her teats excited him. When she asked him to hang in his tub, he didn't think twice because he didn't have the slightest attraction to her, but now that she sat across from him, and because of the steam obscuring his vision, and because Kara's rejection made him feel a certain way, he just wanted to feel something genuine.

Her two piece, crimson bikini fit nicely, and she pulled back her wet hair into the perfect ponytail, and it brightened her tanned face. She continued staring at Kara's apartment, and shook her head in disbelief. "Why, why, why, James? Can't believe your balcony stares right into Kara's apartment," she said with a grimace. "It gives the wrong impression, dude."

"My relationship with Kara took nearly a year to form," he said with a smirk. "When we finally kissed, I had already put down rent for six months on this pad." He smiled for a moment, and then said, "I'm over her."

She smirked. "We'll see." She took a swig of her whiskey, and then said, "You know, my bosses not only ordered me to leave Rachel alone, but they threatened me with suspension if I didn't?" She shook her head in anger, and then said, "I don't know what's going on in that whole area of town. Little Africa is like another planet."

"I'm just glad that monster, Karen Nater, didn't hurt you," he said with a serious look on his face. "There aren't any leads on her whereabouts." He grimaced for a moment, and then said, "I'm thinking some outside agencies are involved in this. She fought like the perfect weapon."

She leaned back in the whirl pool, and looked up at the night sky. "We're dealing with superhuman species on the daily now, and meta-humans are creeping on the scene by the hundreds. My fear is Supergirl or Superman turning on us. We need a government registry for these metas."

"I don't think they'd do that, Maggie," he said in their defense. "I've known Superman for a number of years now."

"I wouldn't either, but the political climate in the world is changing," she said with a scowl on her face. "With the forming of the United States of Africa, I believe we're going to hit a huge depression. Everybody will be clawing for their position in the new world."

"I can't see it," he said. He took a drink of his Apple Martini, and then said, "The UN will bring Africa under control."

Maggie position her bra for a moment, and then looked up at the night sky. She smiled, and then looked over at him. "Tell me something, James?" She asked. She looked up at him with drunk eyes, and a half smile.

"What?" He asked.

"Be truthful," she said calmly. "Superman came to Earth nearly eighty years ago, right?"

"It's true," he said with a serious look on his face. He didn't talk about Superman's past too much. "He ages slowly."

"But. But Lois Lane died in nineteen-eighty-three of kidney cancer and Lucy died in nineteen ninety-six. I looked them up."

James hopped out of the water, and walked on the balcony in just his speedo.

"Damn! You're ripped like nobody's business," Maggie said. "You're like a model."

"Thanks," he said with a sheepish smile on his face. "I don't talk about what happened with Lois." He looked over at her for a moment, and his countenance changed. "Yes. Lois, Lucy and her father are all clones because Superman demanded it."

"But why?" She asked with a grimace.

"I don't know the whole story," he said, "But Cadmus promised him they'd save his wife from kidney cancer if Superman gave them his seed, but she died before they had a chance to save her."

"So they cloned her?" She asked.

"Yes," he said, "But the clones are flawed. They have a lifespan of five years. They're hoping Rachel can fixed the flaw in the clones." He lay back on the ledge of the hot tub, and she sat right below him. "Maybe he's the reason your command wants you to leave Rachel be. Extending the life of clones would allow for an army of Supermen."

"Perhaps," she said. She bit her bottom lip lightly, and then said, "I don't think that'd a be a good thing."

James played with Maggie's ponytail, and pushed some of Maggie's loose hair over her right ear, and she turned quickly to give him a good look. Looking him directly in the face, she just stared at him for a moment, and he expected her to go on one of her rants, but she didn't. She didn't say anything at first, but James gently touched her hair one more time, and she pushed his hand away from her face. She absconded to the other side of the tub, and shook her head in disbelief when she saw he was fully erect. "You're drunk, James," she said softly. "I see you're excited too, but I'm with Alex."

"I didn't mean anything by it," he said. He could feel his man business pushing against his speedo, and he thought his lust for her was actually the alcohol. He had known her for a few months now, and didn't realize he had hidden feelings for her.

"James, don't mess up what I got with Alex, okay?" She said with a grimace.

"I was just moving the hair out of your face," he said smilingly. "It didn't mean anything."

"Oh my, god. You were hitting on me," she said, "Just admit it. Your phallus is sticking straight up in the air over there."

He slid back into the warm water, and laughed. "That's what you call hitting on you?" He smirked. "Ahem." He pulled her by the legs, grabbed her butt cheeks, and pulled her into him, and kissed her gently on the lips. He then let her fall into the water, and said, "Just so we're clear, I consider that hitting on you."

She grimaced, and then said, "You're a dog, James. I should have known you'd want me to attend to your man meat."

"Well. I've made the first move," he said, "What happens next really depends on you."

"I can't, James," she said with a grimace. "I've been working on a relationship with Alex for months, and I'm not willing to jeopardize that." She sat back for a moment, and then said, "I think I'm in a relationship with Alex, but she's not calling me back or texting."

"I won't persist," he said, "It's been awhile since I've felt genuine warmth from the opposite sex. It's up to you."

"I do care about you," she said, "I want you to find a good girl, but it just can't be me. At least until I have some clarity." She raised up out of the water, sat on the ledge, and then said, "Maybe I should go!"

"No," he said, "You're drunk.' He scooted over to her, and then said, "You can sleep on my bed, and I'll take the couch."

Moments later…

James walked into the apartment, looked back at Maggie to see if she was looking at him, and she was with a smile on her face. He felt like he was in a good place, but he didn't want to over do it. Quickly, he changed out of his speedo, and placed on some boxer shorts, a muscle shirt, and a touch of cologne, and then he sat on the balcony while Maggie continued to drink in the tub. He felt the boxers gave his phallus more support as he lusted after the notable, resident lesbian. He had hoped his phallus would soften, and the lust he felt for Maggie would dissipate, but he still desired her. All he could think about was propping her up on his bed, ramming it in, and slapping her tight little behind. He had visioned her riding him a thousand times, and only thirty minutes past since she entered his apartment. He lay back on his recliner, looked out over the city, and all the lights went out at once. The hot tub's jets stopped, and the entire city darkened.

"There isn't a light in the city," Maggie said. She hopped out of the tub, and then said, "I see beautiful lights in Little Africa. Look at that."

The aureate lights illuminated the darkness, and James thought it was more beautiful than the Fortress of Solitude. A crimson and emerald light wove together like lovers under the eerie moon, and raced around the city like the venerable Barry Allen. He saw them crawling through the dark streets of Little Africa, and it wove in and out of every house. The rays of beauty scared, enamored, and excited him because he knew the end of mankind danced in front of his glistening eyes, and a race of super-humans had just been born.

"I haven't ever seen the city this dark," he said. "The lights coming out of Little Africa are ominous." Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders, and rubbed her softly.

"That feels really good. Relaxing," she said smilingly. She looked up at him, over her right shoulder, and asked, "You have a shirt and shorts I can wear?"

"Yeah," he said. Suddenly, the lights came back on in the city. "We got lights," he said.

When he walked back out of the apartment with the shorts and shirts, he noticed the pool of multicolored lights hovering above Little Africa, and it was like the gods were watching. Flashes of light bounced throughout the entire area, and James hadn't seen anything like it in his life.

"That's beautiful," Maggie said. "Incredible."

James handed the clothes to Maggie, and she ran into the bathroom for a few minutes, and he sat on the couch, turned on the television, and then a public service announcement came on the screen. It warned that a large, radioactive wave swept over Little Africa, and they expected mass casualties, but the medical personnel couldn't enter the area until the radiation subsided. Quickly, he looked out over the city, and saw the fluorescent glow over Little Africa, and he knew what it meant: Nigga Night.

Rachel stood less than sixty inches when she unlawfully entered his apartment, but she had powers beyond anything he had ever imagined. With her mind, she controlled him like he was a puppet, and if she's adroit in science, then she may change the human race to something else. When she stood in his apartment, and said a change was going to come, he didn't believe her because madmen always promised change, but nothing ever did. Before she left, she muttered the residents of Little Africa would be free to live, to enjoy life, and to embrace the world on a whole other level.

After he ruminated, he watched Maggie walk from the bathroom with her wet hair, loose fitting clothes, and drunk, but sexy smile. Gently, she brushed it all out, that auburn hair, and it hung in her face, fighting against its master's desire to tame it, but tamed it she did.

She used that old, antique silver brush of Lucy's, a brush that went back over forty years before Cadmus ever cloned her; and when she sat on the edge of his bed, wearing the baggy shorts, the loose fitting shirt that fought for a place on her left shoulder, and without a support bra, he realized her pleasure came from the chase. With a simple move to the left or to the right, and he quickly realized it didn't matter which way she moved, she exposed her perky breast to him, and as the moments turned into minutes, his eyes peered at her lady parts a thousand times.

"The glow over Little Africa is radioactive," he said in a calm voice. "The first responders can't enter the area because of the radiation."

"Are they thinking mass casualties?" She said with a grimace.

"Don't know," he said. He walked over to the balcony, and then said, "Tomorrow, National City will be fundamentally changed."

Maggie sat back on the bed, and looked through her phone, and then said, "I haven't received a text concerning the glow."

"I'm going to call Snapper," he said. He grabbed the remote control off the nightstand, and Maggie looked up at him with sultry eyes, and the entire situation felt weird because if any other girl lay in his bed with the same look, they'd be swirled together fighting for the ultimate climax.

He turned on the wide-screen television, and a balding man appeared in front of him. "Snapper, who do we have on the radiation problem in Little Africa?" He asked. He tried to focus on the moment, and put on a serious look. He paced the floor, and then said, "Put Trudy, Nathan, Shannon, Mike and Gil on the scene. They're the best on scene reporters."

"I don't know, Olsen. How close to the action do you want them?" Snapper asked with a grimace.

"Only within a safe distance," he said. "The police will give them directions on where they can and can't be."

"Roger that," Snapper said. "I've listened to the police scanner, and all cell service has been cutoff to the area."

"By the radiation or by the city?" James asked.

Snapper smirked, and then let out a devious laugh. "Wake up, Olsen. Amanda! Cadmus! It stinks of all her bullshit."

"I fear you're right, old man. I fear you're right," he said.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

JJ passed out under the electrical box in the closet of Peppermint's apartment, and when he awoke, he still had hold of the handle. Something singed the wall next to the power box, and he knew her parents would be mad at the mess. He stood in the middle of the room bare and cold, and when he looked down at the floor, his shorts were nothing more than a pile of ashes. He walked out the closet in a daze, and his girlfriend was nowhere to be found. When he ran into the living room, she lay lifeless on the ground in a pile of vomit, and she wasn't moving at all. He shook her wildly, but her lifeless body lay underneath his hands.

"Get up, Peppermint!" He screamed so loud, so forceful that it shook the building. Her warm body gave him hope, but he couldn't detect her breath. He looked to see if he could see her stomach rise and fall, and when he didn't see anything, a rage came over his entire body, and a white glow encompassed him. He touched his beloved, and shocked her awake. Peppermint leaped off the ground into a fighting stance.

"Holy sweet tarts, JJ!" She exclaimed. "How long was I out?"

"A few hours," he said with a grimace. "It's a little after two o'clock in the morning. I woke up in the utility closet." JJ grabbed her by the hand, ran them a bath, and they both go into the tub. He washed her back, and then she washed his. It was like clockwork with them. It wasn't any surprises between them at all.

Quickly, JJ and Peppermint put on their clothes, and he kissed her for a long time, and then said, "I thought you had died. I was so scared. You don't even know what I went through."

"Oh! I know," she said. "The same thing I'd go through if I thought I lost you."

When the couple stepped outside of the apartment complex, Little Africa was completely silent, and nothing seemed to move in the entire section of town. The sky—blackened and quiet—didn't have one machine flying overhead, and the smell of sewage permeated through the air. An old, nineteen seventy-eight Buick crashed into the building across the street, and the occupants lay dead on the side of the road. A pimp called Sweet Sugar and his worker, April May, lay in front of the couple's feet, and Peppermint cried for them. They looked peaceful, and JJ didn't find one blemish on them as he checked them for life. The streetlights flickered, most buildings had lights, and the stars shined high in the sky, but nothing moved. Cautious, the couple walked quietly into the back alley across from their apartment, and half expected to see Officer Gee with some poor black girl draped over a trashcan. And when they arrived on the scene, Officer Gee lay on the ground with his pants around his ankles and a young, black teenager next to him.

"Maybe we're in hell," Jimmy lamented.

"I don't think so," Peppermint said.

"How do you know?" He asked.

"My hell is without you," she said, "Since you're here, this can't be hell."

JJ pulled out his cellphone, and he received over fifty messages from his Momma who worked the overnight shift at National City Regional Hospital or NCRH, and she wrote about the National Guard blocking all entries and exits to Little Africa until the radiation dissipated. She wrote that the National Guard appeared to be keeping people in, and nobody came out once the radiation started. He could feel his Momma's pain through the text messages, and he immediately wrote her a short missive.

JJ's Message:

Peppermint and I are okay. There are dead people everywhere, and we're heading over to Tommy Tater's house. I know Reverend Tater doesn't like Peppermint and I at all, but Tommy is my friend, and I have to see if he's okay. We love you Momma, and we're okay.

End of Message:

His mother messaged him immediately:

You and Peppermint go into the sewers. The government is saying you're infected with a disease that has to be eradicated. You must hide.

End of message

JJ paced back and forth in the alleyway, and his fear became palpable. He looked at Peppermint, and she returned the gaze, and then she said, "What?" He gave her his cellphone, and then gasped. "Can they do that?"

"I don't know," he said with a grimace. "I have to get my father's gun."

"JJ! They will kill you," she said.

"I'd rather go out with guns ablazing than on my back like a coward," he said with a grimace. "If the order has been given, then we don't have a country. My only mission in life is to protect you."

She looked down at the ground with tears rolling down her face. "Then we'll fight until our last breath, JJ. That's what we'll do."

Trinity Baptist Church…

Bodies sprawled out in front of the old, black church, and it appeared the Friday night prayer session had just concluded when the radiation hit. He didn't see any life in the people, and it caused a great fear in his heart. He walked inside the chapel, and Tommy lay on the floor, and his girlfriend Becky was right beside him. JJ sobbed for a moment, and then he felt a tingle in his head, but thought it was just a thing, and tried to ignore it.

"JJ, my name is Rachel Ballard," the voice whispered in his head. "I feel your pain, but the people aren't dead. They're asleep. We only have a few hours before the military enters into the city, and tries to kill us."

"Did you cause this?" He asked out loud.

"Who are you talking to?" Peppermint asked. "God?"

"Tell her no," Rachel said.

"No, baby," he said, "I'm talking to Rachel Ballard."

"I'm the girl on the warehouse," she said.

"It's the girl on the warehouse," he said.

"Where's she at?" Peppermint asked.

"In my head," he said.

"Did you wake up first or was it your girlfriend?" She asked telepathically.

"It was me," he said.

"Then you're the Vulcan," she said.

"What's going on?" Peppermint asked. "I think we should leave."

Suddenly, he buckled over in pain, and she tried to grab him, but he shook her off, and then said, "Stand back, baby. Something is happening to me."

"I'm not going to leave you," she said.

"Run, Peppermint," he said, "I'm begging you."

Suddenly, Rachel swooped into the chapel, grabbed his girlfriend, and flew off with her. "Let the energy flow out of you, JJ," Rachel said telepathically.

A blast of electrical energy came out of his hands, and hit every soul throughout the city, and caused them to awaken. The air smelled like burning wood, and he didn't know what happen, but the people in the chapel awoke, and he heard cries and praying-and anger. He stumbled out of the chapel, and another burst of energy released from his body, and went all over Little Africa. He then looked up, and saw Rachel with Peppermint, and it upset JJ so badly that he leaped into the air, flew up to her, and said, "Put my girl friend down."

"JJ, I'm not holding her," she said, "Oh. And you're flying."

He looked down, and said, "Holy…"

"Watch your mouth, young man," she said.

"Peppermint, fly over to me," he said.

Rachel stepped away from her, and then Peppermint flew over to Jimmy, and kissed him. "How is this possible?" Peppermint asked.

"It's like you were chosen," Rachel said, "You two probably received the brunt of the mutagenic energy, but you have the powers of a god flowing through you now."

"You did this?" He looked down at his hands for a moment, and then said, "You've hurt people."

"Times demanded change," she said, "If we don't make tomorrow better, then forces outside of our control will wipe us out. You're the Vulcan."

"Told you, Peppermint," he said.

"You understand you carry the lightening bolts of the gods because you are a god," she said, "The fire. Your ancient bolts flew out of the sky, struck the land, and burned it all. After everything burned, new life began. Just as you imbued all of Little Africa with your revitalizing energy, you now must show the world your inner beauty, and inspire them to be great." She turned to Peppermint, and smiled. "You're Vulcan's Venus. His faithful wife who stands equal to him, and will help him in his quest to save mankind from itself."

"We're only sophomores in highschool," he said.

She smiled, "Vulcan, there are plenty of good people who have powers now," she said. She paused for a moment, and then said, "You will run into a crop of evil people, and their new powers will drive them insane. There will be more than a few, and you have to take them off the street. I won't be able to help you in your mission because I have to find the Destroyer's grandmother. She will give birth to her daughter in twenty-twenty-six, and then I calculate she will give birth to the Destroyer at the age of fourteen."

"Are you going to kill her?" Peppermint asked.

"No," she said, "The Destroyer's birth mother is nothing more than a vessel, and won't survive to see her child."

"That's horrible," JJ said.

"It's the way of things," she said, "Nobody in the delivery room will survive his birth."

"What of the National Guard?" Peppermint asked.

"When they enter in the city, they'll never exit alive," she said. "There are men and women imbued with great powers now. When attacked, they'll respond with extreme force. JJ, you and Peppermint are leaders, but if you're attacked, you must respond in kind." She looked at Peppermint, and then said, "Show me what you got!"

Suddenly, a glow encompassed Peppermint, and she shot a laser across the sky with one hand, and a sticky sludge with the other one. As it flew across the sky, it turned hard as a rock. "I'm bad ass," she said.

"You've always been badass to me," JJ said.

Thirty Minutes Later…

The lust, the roar of passion without love, and two bodies entwined in a dog-like embrace, James Olsen pounded a young woman from behind while grabbing her hair. It was raw and aggressive—and brutal. The smell of the moment permeated throughout the entire apartment, and Rachel stood on the balcony in disgust. She walked into James' apartment as he pounded the woman into the mattress, and she screamed for him to grab her hair and slap her bottom.

"How you like that, Maggie?" He asked abrasively.

"Give it to me," she screamed.

Suddenly, her entire body went limp underneath James' push, and Rachel caused her to pass out completely. Immediately, James screamed, "Oh, god! I killed her." He tried to shake her, but it didn't do anything. When he grabbed his phone, Rachel waved her right hand, and it flew to her.

"She's not dead," she said softly. "You're not big enough to kill with your penis." She laughed.

"You could've warn somebody," James said. "I think you're trying to kill me."

James walked across the floor, and sat his bare butt on the couch. Rachel sat on the loveseat, and said, "The world has changed. Nigga Night commenced, and the party has only begun."

"Okay," he said.

"Amanda had me build a machine to enhance the residents of Little Africa," she said, "But of course, she likes excitement. She likes to cause conflict, so she can analyze the outcome. The military has been made aware of what has happened overnight, and they will move into the area in the hopes of eradicating the people."

"There's tens of thousands of people in that area," he said.

"Yes. They're very powerful, dangerous, and most of them are good people," she said, "But like I told the Vulcan, some of them aren't so good. Unfortunately, your little suit won't be a match." Rachel pulled a syringe out the pocket of her dress, and it had a clear liquid in it.

"What's that?" James asked.

"The world can no longer accommodate a man with such a good heart to be a mere human," she said with a grimace. "I've worked on this formula since I was thirteen for a hero, for a Guardian with skillful hands and feet," she said, "You can continue to wear your suit, but this formula will give you unbreakable skin, the ability to fly, and enhanced senses."

"Are there any side effects?" He asked.

"Aggression," she said, "But you can control it through meditation."

"I don't know about this," he said.

"James, I designed this formula for you," she said, "You need to quit being everybody's errand boy, and start being the man your father wanted you to be. Now, the Vulcan needs a father figure, and you're the best example in National City."

"I can't do it," James said as he stood to his feet. Suddenly, the syringe flew out Rachel's right hand, and into James' neck, and she injected him with the formula. "Dammit!"

"You really thought you had a choice?" She asked with a grimace. "There're no choices here. You're the only hero outside of the Vulcan and Peppermint who care. And they're kids." She paused for a moment. "Nobody cares about Little Africa except for us, James."

"I feel warm all over," he said. He turned to her completely bare, "Is this normal?"

"Your DNA is changing. You're becoming beyond human," she said. Curious, she looked over at Maggie's limp body, and asked, "What do you see in her?"

"What do you mean?" He asked squinting.

"She's broken. Her soul is black like the night, and she cares for nothing." She bent down, and looked her directly in the face. "I sense no empathy in her. She doesn't feel the way you feel." She turned to James, and asked, "Who's Alex?"

"Her girlfriend," he said.

"Alex is one of many," she said with a grimace. "She's concerned because of your proximity to Alex." She turned to James, and said, "Why did you sleep with Alex's girlfriend?" She asked.

"It was the alcohol," he said.

"No. No," she said, "You need to work on your moral compass, and point it due north." She grimaced. "You betrayed your friend with this act, and every time you see her, you'll feel a certain way about it. She will pick up on your feelings, and will find out what you've done."

"How do you know?" He asked.

"Its human nature," she said, "It's the way of things."

All of a sudden, James fell to the ground, and cried in pain. His muscles tightened up, and he screamed to die. Rachel flew away, and left him to his misery.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

The tanks rolled into Little Africa approximately five o'clock in the morning, and tore up the streets, ran over cars, and parked right down main street. JJ and Peppermint slept in Martin Luther King JR's Park under the old oak tree to the north, and he awoke with her snuggled up to him. They were nestled in his old sleeping bag, but when he heard the large tanks pull in across the park, they hurried out of the bag, rolled it into a ball, and absconded from the park. JJ saw several soldiers run towards him with their guns at port arms, and one of the killers pointed his rifle at him. When he pulled back the charging handled, a lightning bolt came out of JJ's right hand, and tore through all the soldiers in his immediate area. It ripped them in half, and Peppermint panicked for a second.

"Oh, god," she said with a grimace. "Soldiers have pinkish blood?"

"They're synthetics, but it doesn't matter," he said. "This is our home, Peppermint, and we'll kill every last one of them until they kill us or leave Little Africa."

"You are the Vulcan," she said with a straight face. "Humans or machines or whatever they send won't leave whole. "

"Let's do this," JJ said.

The Vulcan flew into the air, over the tanks, and hit them with an electrical blast so powerful that it killed every person in and around the tank. Pinkish blood flew high into the sky, and he moved with adept precision over the enemy forces. He fried them all, and didn't leave anything to the imagination. When a jet flew by, it let out its payload, and Peppermint shot her goo into the missile's thrust. It fell haphazardly towards the ground, and then the Vulcan hit it with an electrical blast. It caused the missile to blow up above the park, and didn't cause any damage at all. She flew after the jet, and when she caught up to it. She moved through the air like a missile, and the jet plane didn't stand a chance. She hit it with her goo, caused the plane to lose power, and it nosed dived to the ground. She followed it down, and then when the pilot ejected, she sliced him in half with her laser fire. His pinkish blood flew into the air, and then she said, "Shouldn't have messed with the Asian."

Jimmy heard something cutting through the wind, and before he had a chance to see what was happening, a blond woman punched him in the face, and he flew across the sky.

"Bitch!" Peppermint screamed as she raced to him, and then shot Supergirl with her laser. The force from the laser flung the woman in blue across the morning sky, and as she flew backwards, Peppermint flew into her, and punched her wildly while screaming, "Nobody hits my man like that." Supergirl gave her an uppercut, and then JJ hit Supergirl with a powerful lightning bolt, and she tumbled to the ground. He then flew after her, and caught her in midair, and set her down safely.

"I thought you were one of the good guys," JJ said. "You should be fighting with us instead of against us."

"I am," she said, "You attacked the soldiers." In the background, JJ heard a slew of gun fire.

"They're killing us," JJ said, "Can't you hear it?"

Peppermint flew down, and said, "She wasn't worth the catch."

"I know you two," Supergirl said. "You're the kids at the adult store."

"Oh. I guess the blond reporter is Supergirl," JJ said.

"Listen?" Peppermint said.

"It's a missile," Supergirl said. "Take cover."

JJ flew into the air, saw the missile, and hit it with a lightening bolt, and when he did, it blew up in midair.

"JJ, this is Rachel," she said telepathically. "A barrage of missiles is coming your way. I want you to use your energy to make a force shield over the area. Bend down, touch the earth, and absorb its energy, and then push it into the air."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. He bent down, placed his hands on the earth, and then he took in as much energy as he could. "Stand back, Peppermint and Spectacles. If this doesn't stop the missiles, get out of here. Take Spectacles with you too." He threw his hands into the air, and a panoramic lightning field ascended into the air, caught all the missiles, and caused them to ignite.

"Spectacles, please call them back?" JJ asked.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"It's either that or I'll kill them all," he said, "We didn't do anything to them."

"I'm going to check out Main Street," Supergirl said.

"Be careful," Peppermint said.

The Girl of Steel took off at the speed of sound, and JJ waited for a moment. The screams reverberated throughout the entire area, and the gunfire too. He saw a man limp by with a gunshot wound to the leg. "They're killing us." He lumbered past Jimmy, and said, "They put a bullet in Mickey's head. They shot me with some kind of rubber bullet. My leg is numb."

Peppermint covered her mouth in disbelief, and then said, "Playtime is over now."

JJ cried for a moment, hugged Peppermint, and then said to her, "Let's go get them." When he landed in the middle of Main Street, he saw two soldiers hold Supergirl down with a green brick, and he shot the guys with a bolt of lightning. He grabbed the brick, pushed his energy into it, and made it inert.

"You should leave, Spectacles," Peppermint said. "It's not your fight."

"Besides, we're going to do ugly things," JJ said, "We don't want your face attached to it."

"Please leave," Peppermint said. Suddenly, she gasped as she looked around the area. "JJ, all the tanks are floating."

"I know," he said, "They're in my electrical field. Rachel is showing me all kinds of snazzy things I can do with my powers." He looked at Spectacles, and said, "I'm going to smash them under the weight of the electrical field."

"Don't do it," Supergirl said.

Suddenly, the Guardian sped up to them on his bike. He was dressed in all silver, and said, "Vulcan. Put them down."

"Only because I respect you," he said. JJ stretched out his hands, and sent all the vehicles and soldiers across the line to National City. "There."

"They shouldn't have come here," Peppermint said with a grimace. "We protect our own."

"That's right. We don't see any of you super freaks over here on any other day," he said, "And then y'all come to kill us because of a little radiation. Spectacles, you can take your ass back to National City."

"You know who she is?" The Guardian asked.

"Yes," he said, "We'll keep her secret, but coming into Little Africa with an army of synthetics is a crime."

Mickey lay on the ground with a bump on his head, but breathing, and when JJ saw that, he ran over to one of the soldier's guns. "It's not a lethal weapon, Peppermint."

"So, this is all a test?" She asked.

"For what?" The Guardian asked.

Supergirl smelled the air for a moment, and then she smelled her hands. She then smelled JJ and Peppermint. "You two freaks being getting busy."

"You saw the bag of protection," Peppermint said. "We didn't buy the rubbers for a balloon party."

"Yeah. You two kids are strong of mind," Kara said. She looked over at James for a moment with a grimace on her face. "Why, James? Why did you have sex with Maggie? Are you trying to crush my sister? You're drenched in Maggie's scent."

He paused for a moment, and said, "It just happened. It didn't mean anything."

"Didn't mean anything?" Peppermint asked with a grimace. "Why would you do meaningless things? I bet Spectacle's sister won't think it didn't mean anything. "

"It's odd, Peppermint. This Guardian guards everything except for the hearts of his friends." JJ walked over to his girlfriend, and placed his right arm around her waist. He pulled out a peppermint ball, unwrapped it, and placed it in her mouth.

"Thank you, sir," she said.

"These kids obviously know more about matters of the heart than you," Supergirl said.

"Look who's talking!" The Guardian exclaimed. "You shattered my heart into a million pieces like I didn't matter. I'm just trying to pick up what's left of my dignity."

"Oh, my freaking god," JJ said, "You two are not boxy at all. You just hurt each other like it's a National City pastime."

"It's not like that, Vulcan," Supergirl said, "We wouldn't have survived with all the outside pressures."

"Well, I don't think that excuses cheating," JJ said. "I wouldn't let anything break the bond I have with Peppermint."

"I know what I did was wrong," James said. "But if I tell Alex it will devastate her."

"I'd fall on my sword before I ever cheated on Peppermint," JJ said.

"And I'd kill the bitch," Peppermint said with a smile.

"You guys act like you've been together for a decade," James said with a smile.

Peppermint started counting on her fingers, and then said, "Eleven years. Officially eleven years."

"That's when I proposed," he said with a smile.

"Do you guys fight?" Supergirl asked.

"Yes," they said at the same time. "We grew up together, and our fathers were best friends. They married their wives at the same time in the same church." Jimmy smiled. "Peppermint was born April the second."

"He was born April Fool's Day," she said, and then she started tickling him. He started laughing when all of a sudden, a military tank flew in the air, and Supergirl caught it, set it down on the ground, and then scolded JJ. "Why did you do that?"

"Don't raise your voice to him!" Peppermint said. "You know it wasn't him."

"It wasn't me," Jimmy said.

Another tank flew into the air, and this time JJ caught it in his electrical field, and set it on the ground. "Who's throwing tanks?" JJ screamed. Suddenly he felt a tingle in his mind, and Rachel explained to him everything that he needed to do. "Listen," he said, "We're being tested. It's the clone of the Great Mother."

"Who's that?" Supergirl asked.

"She's a clone of the god who imbued your race with superpowers," he said. "It was her son who turned Krypton's sun red."

"Oh! That myth isn't true," she said laughingly. "It's a childhood fable on Krypton about the Great Unifier turning Krypton's sun red as a punishment for evil deeds."

A sage colored woman approximately seven feet tall walked up to them, and they backed up. The snakes in her hair flapped around, and it made JJ nervous. "If you feel a tingle in your mind, think of a deck of cards."

"Why?" Supergirl said.

"Because she can read minds," he said, "We're dealing with a godlike being. If you think of other things, it makes it harder for the telepathy to manipulate you. "

"Kara, you're probably the strongest," JJ said. "Guardian is pretty strong too, but I think you got him."

"I'm way stronger than some asshole playing dress up," she said.

"Don't be so sure," The clone of the Great Mother said, "I helped design the superman formula that James took to enhance his strength. Let's see what you got, Vulcan."

JJ threw a lightning bolt at the clone, and she caught it like it was nothing. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed JJ into the street. Supergirl flew into her, and she flipped the girl of steel into the air, and then JJ caught her. When she tried to hit James, he used his shield to block the punch, and then came at her with an uppercut. It knocked her back.

"JJ, get over here," Peppermint said.

He flew over to her, and said to his girlfriend, "You know what to do."

Peppermint looked at Spectacles, and said, "Go high." She turned to James, and said, "Go low."

"If she stumbles, I will come in with an earthshaking lightening bolt."

"Let's do it," Peppermint said. She turned to the sage clone, and said, "You've messed with the wrong kind of Asian today."

"Let's see what you got, fortune cookie," the clone said.

"Oh hell to the naw," Peppermint said as she shot a boatload of sticky goo at the clone's feet. It hardened quickly, and then she screamed, "Take it to her Spectacles!" Kara Hit her with an uppercut, and then James punched her in the midsection, and it caused her to fall backwards. JJ hit her with a lightening bolt that caused her to abscond.

"She ran off," Spectacles said.

"Not out of fear," JJ said.

"It was a test," James said, "If we could go just one round with the clone of the Great Mother, it meant we have the skill set needed for what's to come."

"I think we do," Peppermint said. "But you need to make things right with your family, James."

A black woman in a military uniform walked up to them. It was Amanda Waller, and she felt her chin like she was experiencing pain. She looked at the crew of heroes, and said, "You idiots have a lot of work. There are threats from all regions of the universe, and I need y'all to fight like a well oiled machine." She walked over to JJ, and said, "All theses soldiers you killed were robots, but I needed to see you and Peppermint in action."

Peppermint held on to JJ's left hand, and Spectacles sighed for a moment. "What's all this about?"

"This world must change," Amanda said with a grimace. "I've given the world a new breed of metas that will be able to fight against alien threats," she said. "I can promise you Earth is a target because the Destroyer will be born here."

JJ looked at her funny for a moment, and asked, "Rachel mentioned the Destroyer to me. Is he evil?"

She laughed. "It depends," she said with a grimace. "Are you evil? Do you stab your friends in the back?" She looked directly at James. "Is that how this world operates?"

"I don't," Peppermint said. "Ask James?"

"One time," James said, "It won't happen again." He looked over at Amanda with inquisitive eyes, and asked, "Did you kill my father?"

"Your father isn't dead," she said with a grimace. "He's on another world in a region of space called the Dark Corridor." She paused for a moment. "Using all the known wormholes, it takes approximately ten years to travel to the Dark Corridor, and none of the ships are faster than warp seven. You won't ever see your father again."

"Why would he just leave?" James asked with a grimace.

"None of you seem to fathom the importance of the Destroyer," she said. "Aliens from all over the galaxy have been calculating his arrival. It's serious business."

"How will we know he's born?" Peppermint asked.

"Nobody will be able to touch him," she said. She looked at Supergirl, and smiled. "That means you, Kara."

"How powerful is he?" Supergirl asked.

Amanda started walking away, and then said, "The Guardians of Oa tried to destroy Krypton a million years ago." She paused for a moment, and smiled. "They damaged the core of Krypton, and the planet was hours from exploding. The Destroyer touched the surface of Krypton, and healed the planet. He then flew into Krypton's yellow sun."

"But that's just an old myth on Krypton. Nobody believes that actually happened," Supergirl said. "The myth is of the Great Unifier healing Krypton and then taking away our powers so we would learn empathy. In reality, Krypton's sun has always been red."

"He turned it red. He said the only way for Kryptonians to grow in wisdom, intelligence, and culture was to take away their powers." She paused for a moment, and then said, "But nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, the Guardians damaged Krypton's sun again."

"Why didn't he stop it?" JJ asked.

"The Destroyer wanted to live life as a Doraxian. He wanted to love as a mortal, and he fell in love with a Doraxian woman named Su'Ra Nalia. She's the doppelganger of his wife, Su'Ri Sayd. There were two races on the planet during that time. It was the Grays and the Blues. The Grays were cruel, and enslaved the Blues. He gave the Grays a choice on who would live and who would die. Since the Grays were the ruling class, he gave them the test, and failure meant the Grays would slowly die out."

"Did they fail?" Peppermint asked.

"Yes," she said, "Less than one hundred exists today."

"So he comes to a planet, and decides who lives and who dies?" Supergirl said.

"He'll be born from a woman on this world," she said. "His mother will die upon his birth, and some wealthy person will raise him. He will have everything he needs in life." She smiled. "As he grows with the human race, he will learn their ways, and when he reaches the age of fourteen, a powerful ring will come to him that imbues him with the knowledge of the universe. From there, he can determine what needs to happen."

"So, without the ring, he's a normal kid?" Peppermint asked.

"No," she said with a grimace. "He's a thousand times stronger than any Kryptonian. He has all their powers with none of their weaknesses." She paused for a moment. "Well, he has a weakness."

"What's that?" Peppermint asked.

"The same as JJ," she said.

"Oh. Pornhub and pizza," Peppermint quipped. "The two powerfullest Ps in the history of humankind."

James and Supergirl laughed.

"His love for two special women," she said laughingly. "He loves two women, and if one of them dies, he flies into a yellow sun, and never returns."

"My love for Peppermint isn't a weakness," JJ said, "It's my greatest strength."

"Right on! Right on," Peppermint said.

"Even though you kids have been together since birth, all good things must come to an end," Amanda said.

"Yes. Death will take the best of us," JJ said.

"One day you'll probably just break up," she said as she walked away.

Peppermint and JJ laughed loudly. "Yeah. You wish." JJ picked up Mickey off the ground, set him on the bench, and as he awoke, he said, "How you feeling, old man?"

"What happen?" He asked.

"I don't know," he said. "You need to see a doctor about that knot on your head." JJ and Peppermint flew into the air, and then JJ said to Supergirl and the Guardian, "Don't call us. We'll call you."


End file.
